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APPLICATION 



OF 



®ieiBii©^a^S5a^w 



TO THE 



COMMERCIAL AND ORDINARY 

AFFAIRS OF LIFE, 

IN A SERIES OF DISCOURSES. 



BY 

THOMAS CHALMERS, D. D. 

MIKISTER OF ST. JOHN'S CHURCH, GLASGOW. 



PUBLISHED BY Si>MUEL CAMPBELL & SON, 

NO. 88 WATER-STREET. 
J. k, J. Harper, Printers. 

1821. 



-J,\i4-»^' 



.Css- 



The LiBRAitv 

OF CoNGRiij^ 



PREFACE, 



This volume can be regarded in no other light, 
than as. the fragment of a subject far too exten- 
sive to be overtaken within a compass so narrow. 
There has only a partial survey been taken of 
the morality of the actions that are current 
among people engaged in merchandise : and with 
regard to the morality of the affections which stir 
in their hearts, and give a feverish and diseased 
activity to the pursuits of worldly ambition, this 
has scarcely been^touched upon, save^ in a very 
general way in the concluding Discourse. 

And yet, in the estimation of every cultivated 
Christian, this second branch of the. subject 
should be by far the most interesting, — as it re- 
lates to that spiritual discipline by which the love 
of the world is overcome ; and by which all that 
oppressive anxiety is kept in check, which the 
reverses and uncertainties of business are so apt 



IV 



to inject into the bosom ; and by which the ap- 
petite that urges him who hasteth to be rich is 
effectually restrained — so as to make it possible 
for a man to give hi$ hand to the duties of his 
secular occupation, and, at the same time, to 
maintain that sacredness of heart which becomes 
every fleeting traveller through a scene, all whose 
pleasures and wliose prospects are so soon to 
pass away. 

Should this part of the subject be resumed at 
some future opportunity, there are two questions 
of casuistry connected with it, which will demand 
no small degree of consideration. The first re- 
lates to the degree in which an affection for pre- 
sent things, and present interests ought to be in- 
dulged. And the second is, whether, on the 
supposition that a desire after the good things of 
the present life were reduced down to the standard 
of the gospel, there would remain a sufficient 
impulse in the world for upholding its commerccj 
at the rate which would secure the greatest 
amount of comfort and subsistence to its families. 

Without offering any demonstration, at present? 
upon this matter, we simply state it as our opinion, 
that, though the whole business of the world 
were in the hands of men thoroughly Christiani- 
sed, and who, rating wealth according to its real 



dimensions oiv the high scale of eternity^ were 
chastened out of all their idolatrous regards to it 
— yet would trade, in these circumstances, be 
carried to the extreme limit of its being really 
productive or desirable. An affection for riches, 
beyond what Christianity prescribes, is not essen- 
tial to anv extension of commerce that is at all 
valuable or legitimate ; and, in opposition to the 
maxim, that the spirit of enterprise is the soul of 
commercial prosperity, do we hold, that it is the 
excess of this spirit beyond the moderation of 
the New Testament, which, pressing on the nat- 
ural boundaries of trade, is sure, at length, to visit 
every country, where it operates with the recoil 
of all those calamities, which, in the shape of 
beggared capitalists, and unemployed operatives, 
and dreary intervals of bankruptcy and alarm, 
are observed to follow a season of overdone 
speculation. 



CONTENTS. 



»«••< 



DISCOURSE I. 

ON THE MERCANTILE VIRTUES WHICH MAY EXIST W1TH> 
OUT THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

" Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things 
are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are 
pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good 
report ; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think 
on these things." — Phill. iv. 8 9 

DISCOURSE IL 

THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY IN AIDING AND AUG- 
MENTING THE MERCANTILE VIRTUES. 

^' For he that in these things serveth Christ is acceptable to God, 
and approved of men." — Rom. xiv. 18 29 

DISCOURSE III. 

THE POWER OF SELFISHNESS IN PROMOTING THE HONES- 
TIES OF MERCANTILE INTERCOURSE. 

'* And if you do good to them which do^ood to you, what thank 
have ye ? for sinners also do even the same," — Luke vi. 83 50 

DISCOURSE IV. 

THE GUILT OF DISHONESTY NOT TO BE ESTIMATED BY 
THE GAIN OF IT. 
'• He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in much ; 
and he that is unjust in the least, is unjust also in much. — Luke 
xvi. 10 , , 75 

DISCOURSE V. 

ON THE GREAT CHRISTIAN LAW OF RECIPROCITY BETWEEN 

MAN AND MAN. 

" Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to 
you, do ye even so to them : for this is the law and the pro- 
phets."—- Matt. vii. 12...„...,,.„....,.: , 102 



vm 



DISCOURSE VI. 

ON THE DISSIPATION OF LARGE CITIES. 

" Let no man deceive you with vain words ; for because of these 
things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of diso- 
bedience."— Ephes. V. 6 124 

DISCOURSE VII. 

ON THE VITIATING INFLUENCE OF THE HIGHER UPON 
THE LOWER ORDERS OF SOCIETY. 

" Then said he unto the disciples, It is impossible but that offences 
will come : but wo unto him through whom they come ! It 
were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, 
and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these 
little ones."— Luke xvii. 1, £ « 4U«*.a.w ..,.148 

DISCOURSE VIII. 

ON THE LOVE OF MONEY. 
" If 1 have made gold my hope, or have said to the fine gold, Thou 
art my confidence ; If 1 rejoiced because my wealth was great, 
and because mine hand had gotten much ; If 1 beheld the 
sun when it shined, or the moon walking in brightness ; and 
my heart hath been secretly enticed, or my mouth hath kissed 
my hand ; this also were an iniquity to be'punished by the judge ; 
for 1 should have denied the God that is above."— Job xxxi. 24--28....173 






DISCOURSE I. 

ON THE MERCANTILE VIRTUES WHICH MAY EXIST WITHOUT 
THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 



*' Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are 
honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, what- 
soever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report ; if there 
he any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things."— 
Phill. iv. 8, 

The Apostle, in these verses, makes use of certain 
terms without ever once proposing to advance any 
definition of their meaning. He presumes on a com- 
mon understanding of this, between himself and the 
people whom he is addressing. He presumes that 
they know what is signified by Truth, and Justice, and 
Loveliness, and the other moral qualities which are 
included in the enumeration of our text They, in 
fact, had words to express them, for many ages ante- 
cedent to the coming of Christianity into the world. 
Now, the very existence of the words proves, that, 
before the gospel was taught, the realities which they 
express must have existed also. These good and res- 
pectable attributes of character must have been occa- 
sionally exemplified by men, prior to the religion of 
the New Testament. The virtuous and the praise- 
worthy must, ere the commencement of the new dis- 
pensation, have been met with in society — for the 
Apostle does not take them up in this passage, as if 
thev were unknown and unheard of novelties-— but 

A7 



10 CHALMER'S DISCOURSES. 

such objects of general recognition, as could be under- 
stood on the bare mention of them, without warning 
and without explanation. 

But more than this. These virtues must not only 
have been exemplilied by men, previous to the en- 
trance of the gospel amongst them — seeing that the 
terms, expressive of the virtues, were perfectly under- 
stood—but men must have known how to love and to 
admire them. How is it that we apply the epithet 
lovely to any moral qualification, but only in as far as 
that qualification does in fact draw towards it a senti- 
ment of love ? How is it that another qualification is 
said to be of good report, but in as far as it has re- 
ceived from men an applauding or an honourable 
testimony ? The Apostle does not bid his readers have 
respect to such things as are lovely, and then, for the 
purpose of saving them from error, enumerate what 
the things are which he conceives to possess this 
qualification. He commits the matter, with perfect 
confidence, to their own sense and their own appre- 
hension. He bids them bear a respect to w^hatsoever 
things are lovely— -nor does he seem at all suspicious, 
that, by so doing, he leaves them in any darkness or 
uncertainty about the precise import of the advice 
which he is delivering. He therefore recognizes the 
competency of men to estimate the lovely and the 
honourable of character. He appeals to a tribunal in 
their own breasts, and evidently supposes, that, antece- 
dently to the light of the Christian revelation, there lay 
scattered among the species certain principles of feehng 
and of action, in .virtue of which, they both occasion- 
ullv exhibited what was just, and true, and of good 



CHALMER'S .DISCOURSES. [j[ 

report, and also could render to such an exhibition 
the homage of their regard and of their reverence. At 
present we shall postpone the direct enforcement of 
these virtues upon the observation of Christians, and 
shall confine our thoughts of them to the object of 
estimating their precise importance and character, 
when they are realized by those who are not Chris- 
tians. 

While we assert with zeal every doctrine of Chris- 
tianity, let us not forget that there is a zeal without 
discrimination ; and that, to bring such a spirit to the 
defence of our faith, or of any one of its peculiarities, 
is not to vindicate the cause, but to discredit it Now, 
there is a way of maintaining the utter depravity of 
our nature, and of doing it in such a style of sweeping 
and of vehement asseveration, as to render sit not 
merely obnoxious to the taste, but obnoxious to the 
understanding. On this subject there is often a round- 
ness and a temerity of announcement, which any 
intelHgent man, looking at the phenomena of human 
character with his own eyes, cannot go along with ; 
and thus it is, that there are injudicious defenders of 
orthodoxy, who have mustered against it not merely a 
positive dislike, but a positive strength of observation 
and argument. Let the nature of man be a ruin, as it 
certainly is, it is obvious to the most common discern- 
ment, that it does not offer one unvaried and unallevi- 
ated mass of deformity. There are certain phrases, and 
certain exhibitions of this nature, which are more love- 
ly than others — certain traits of character, not due to 
the! operation of Christianity at all, and yet calling 
forth our admiration and our tenderness — certaiit 



1-2 CHALMKIVS I>lseorjKSE!5, 

varieties ot' moral complexion, far more fair and more 
engaging than certain other varieties ; and to prove 
that the gospel may haVe had no share in the formation 
of them, they in fact stood out to the notice and res- 
pect of the world before the gospel was ever heard of. 
The classic page of antiquity sparkles with repeated 
exemplifications of what is bright and beautiful in the 
character of man ; nor do all its descriptions of external 
nature waken up such an enthusiasm of pleasure, as 
when it bears testimony to some graceful or elevated 
doing out of the history of the species. And whether 
it be the kindliness of maternal affection, or the un- 
weariedness of filial piety, or the constancy of tried and 
unalterable friendship, or the earnestness of devoted 
patriotism, or the rigour of unbending fidelity, or any 
other of the recorded virtues, which shed a glory over 
the remembrance of Greece and of Rome — we fully 
concede it to the admiring scholar, that they one and 
all of them were sometimes exemplified in those days 
of Heathenism ; and that, out of the materials of a 
period, crowded as it was with moral abominations^ 
there may also be gathered things which are pure, and 
lovely, and true, and just, and honest, and of good 
report. 

What do we mean then, it may be asked, by the 
universal depravity of man ? How shall we reconcile 
the admission now made, with the unqualified and au- 
thoritative language of the Bible, when it tells us of 
the totality and the magnitude of human corruption ? 
Wherein lies that desperate wickedness, which is 
every where ascribed to all the men of all the families 
that be on the face of the earth ? And how can such a 



CHALMERS DISCOURSES. 1,1 

tribute of acknowledgment be awarded to the sages 
and the patriots of antiquity, who yet, as the partakers 
of our fallen nature, must be outcasts from the favour 
of God, and have the character of evil stamped upon 
the imaginations of the thoughts of their iiearts con- 
tinually. 

In reply to these questions, let us speak to your own 
experimental recollections on a subject in which you 
are aided both by the consciousness of what passes 
within you, and by your observation of the character 
of others. Might not a sense of honour elevate that 
heart which is totally unfurnished with a sense of 
God ? Might not an impulseof compassionate feeling 
be sent into that bosom which is never once visited by 
a movement of duteous loyalty towards the Lawgiver 
in heaven ? Might not occasions of intercourse with 
the beings around us, develope whatever there is in 
our nature of generosity, and friendship, and integrity, 
and patriotism ; and yet the unseen Being, who pla- 
ced us in this theatre, be neither loved nor obeyed^ 
nor listened to ? Amid the manifold varieties of hu- 
man character, and the number of constitutional prin- 
ciples which enter into its composition, might there 
not be an individual in whom the constitutional vir- 
tues so blaze forth and have the ascendency, as to give 
a general effect of gracefulness to the whole of this 
moral exhibition ; and yet, may not that individual 
be as unmindful of his God, as if the principles of his 
constitution had been mixed up in such a different pro- 
portion, as to make him an odious and a revolting spec- 
tacle ? In a word, might not sensibility shed forth its 
tears, and Friendship perform its services, and I iibe- 



14 CHALMEa'S DISCOURSES. 

rality impart of its treasure, and Patriotism earn the 
gratitude of its country, and Honour maintain itself 
entire and untainted, and all the softenings of what is 
amiable, and all the glories of what is chivalrous and 
manly, gather into one bright effulgency of moral ac- 
complishment on the person of him who never, for a 
single day of his life, subordinates one habit, or one 
affection, to the will of the Almighty ; who is just as 
careless and as unconcerned about God, as if the na- 
tive tendencies of his constitution had compounded 
him into a monster of deformity ; and who just as ef- 
fectually realizes this attribute of rebellion against his 
maker, as the most loathsome and profligate of the 
species, that he walks in the counsel of his own heart., 
and after the sight of his own eyes ? 

The same constitutional variety may be seen on the 
lower fields of creation. You there witness the gen- 
tleness of one animal, the affectionate fidelity of ano- 
ther, the cruel and unrelenting ferocity of a third ; 
and you never question the propriety of the language, 
when some of these instinctive tendencies are better 
reported of than others ; or when it is said of the 
former of them, that they are the more fine, and amia- 
ble, and endearing. But it does not once occur to 
you, that, even in the very best of these exhibitions, 
there is any sense of God, or that the great master- 
principle of his authority is at all concerned in it. 
Transfer this contemplation back again to our species ; 
and under the same complexional difference of the 
more and the less lovely, or the more and the less 
hateful, you will perceive the same utter insensibility 
to the consideration of a God, or the same utter inef- 



CHALMER'6 DISCOUKSEts. Ij 

ficiency on the part of his law to subdue human habits 
and human inclinations. It is true, that there is one 
distinction between the two cases : but it all goes to 
aggravate the guilt and the ingratitude of man. He 
has an understanding which the inferior animals have 
tiot — and yet, with this understanding does he refuse 
practically to acknowledge God. He has a conscience, 
which they have not — and yet, though u whisper in 
the ear of his inner man the claims of an unseen legis- 
lator, does he lull away his time in the slumbers of 
indifference, and live without him in the world. 

Or go to the people of another planet, over whom 
the hold of allegiance to their maker is unbroken— in 
whose hearts the Supreme sits enthroned, and through- 
out the whole of whose history there runs the perpetu- 
al and the unfailing habit of subordination to his law. 
It is conceivable, that with them too, there may be va- 
rieties of temper and of natural inclination, and yet 
all of them be under the effective control of one great 
and imperious principle; that in subjection to the will 
of God, every kind and ever) honourable disposition 
is cherished to the uttermost ; and that in subjection 
to the same will, every tendency to anger, and malig- 
nity, and revenge, is repressed at the first moment of 
its threatened operation ; and that in this way, there 
will be the fostering of a constant encouragement 
given to the one set of instincts, and the struggling of 
a constant opposition made against the other. Now, 
only conceive this great bond of allegiance to be dis- 
solved ; the mighty and subordinating principle, which 
wont to wield an ascendency over every movement 
and every affection, to be loosened and done away ; 



lis CHALMER'S DiSCOUKSES. 

and then would this loyal, obedient world, become 
what ours is — independent of Christianity. Every 
constitutional desire would run out, in the unchecked 
spontaneity of its own movements. The law of 
heaven would furnish no counteraction to the impulses 
and the tendencies of naiUiC. And tell us, in these 
circumstances, when the restraint of religion was thus 
lifted off, and all the passions let out to take their own 
tumultuous and independent career — tell us, if, though 
amid the uproar of the licentious and vindictive pro- 
pensities, there did gleam forth at times some of the 
finer and the lovelier sympathies of nature— tell us, if 
this would at hU affect the state of that world as a state 
of enmity against God ; where his will was reduced 
to an element of utter insignificancy ; where the voice 
of their rightful master fell powerless on the consciences 
of a listless and alienated family; where humour, and 
interest, and propensity — at one time selfish, and at 
another social — -took their alternate sway over those 
hearts from which there was excluded all effectual ' 
sense of an over-ruling God ? If he be unheeded and 
disowned by the creatures whom he has formed, can 
it be said to alleviate the deformity of their rebellion, 
that they, at times, experience the impulse of some 
amiable feeling which he hath implanted, or at times 
hold out some beauteousness of aspect which he hath 
shed over them ? Shall the value or the multitude of 
the gifts release them from their loyalty to the giver ; 
and when nature puts herself into the attitude of in- 
difference or hostility against him, how is it that the 
graces and the accomplishments of nature can be pi d 
in mitigation of her antipathy to him, who invested 



CHALMER'9 DISCOURSES- 17 

nature with all her graces, and upholds her in the dis- 
play of all her accomplishments ? 

The way, then, to assert the depravity of man, is to 
fasten on the radical element of depravity, and to show 
how deeply it lies incorporated with his moral consti- 
tution. It is not by an utterance of rash and sweeping 
totality to refuse him the possession of what is kifid in 
sympathy, or of what is dignified in principle — for this^ 
were in the face of all observation. It is to charge him 
direct with his utter disloyalty to God. It is to con- 
vict him of treason against the majesty of heaven. It is 
to press home upon him the impiety of not caring 
about God. It is to tell him, that the hourly and habitual 
language of his heart is, 1 will not have the Being who 
made me to rule over me. It is to go to the man of 
honour, and, while we frankly award it to him that his 
pulse beats high in the pride of integrity — it is to tell 
him, that he who keeps it in living play, and who sus- 
tains the loftiness of its movements, and who, in one 
moment of time, could arrest it for ever, is not in all 
his thoughts. It is to go to the man of soft and gentle 
emotions, and, while we gaze in tenderness upon him 
— it is to read to him, out of his own character, how 
the exquisite mechanism of feeling may be in full ope- 
ration, while he who framed it is forgotten; while he 
who poured into his constitution the milk of human 
kindness, may never be adverted to with one single 
sentiment of veneration, or one single purpose of obe- 
dience ; while he who gave him his gentler nature, who 
clothed him in all its adornments, and in virtue of 
whose appointment it is, that, instead of an odious and 
a revolting monster, he is the much loved child of sen- 






IS CHALMERS DISCOURSES. 

sibility, may be utterly disowned by him. In a words 
it is to go round among all that Humanity has to offer 
in the shape of fair and amiable, and engaging, and 
to prove how deeply Humanity has revolted against 
that Being who has done so much to beautify and to 
exalt her. It is to prove that the carnal mind, under 
all its varied complexions of harshness or of delicacy, 
is enmity against God. It is to prove that, let nature 
be as rich as she may in moral accomplishments, and 
let the most favoured of her sons realize upon his own 
person the finest and the fullest assemblage of them — 
should he, at the moment of leaving this theatre of 
display, and bursting loose from the framework of 
mortality, stand in the presence of his judge, and have 
the question put to him, What hast thou done unto me ? 
this man of constitutional virtue, with all the saluta- 
tions he got upon earth, and all the reverence that he 
has left behind him, may, naked and defenceless, be- 
fore him who sitteth on the throne, be left without a 
plea and without an argument. 

God's controversy with our species, is not, that the 
glow of honour or of humanity is never felt among 
them. It is, that none of them understandeth, and 
none of them seeketh after God. It is, that he is de- 
posed from his rightful ascendency. It is that he, who 
in fact inserted in the human bosom every one princi- 
ple that can embelHsh the individual possessor, or 
maintain the order of society, is banished altogether 
from the circle of his habitual contemplations. It is, 
that man taketh his way in life as much at random, as 
if there was no presiding Divinity at all ; and that, 
whether he at one time si'oH-^i in the depths of seii?u- 



CHALMERS DISCOURSES. J 9 

ality, or at another kindle with some generous move- 
ment of sympathy or of patriotism, he is at both times 
alike unmindful of him to whom he owes his continu- 
ance and his birth. It is, that he moves his every foot- 
step at his own will ; and has utterly discarded, from 
its supremacy over him, the will of that invisible Mas- 
ter who compasses all his goings, and never ceases to 
pursue him by the claims of a resistless and legitimate 
authority. It is this which is the essential or the con- 
stituting principle of rebellion against God. This it 
is which has exiled the planet we live in beyond the 
limits of his favoured creation — and whether it be 
shrouded in the turpitude of licentiousness or cruelty, 
or occasionally brightened with the gleam of the kindly 
and the honourable virtues, it is thus that it is seen as 
afar off, by Him who sitteth on the throne, and looketli 
on our strayed world, as athwart a wide and a dreary 
gulf of separation. 

And when prompted by love towards his alienated 
children, he devised a way of recalling them— -when 
willing to pass over all the ingratitude he had gotten 
from their hands, he reared a pathway of return, and 
proclaimed a pardon and a welcome to all who should 
walk upon it — when through the offered Mediator, 
who magnified his broken law, and upheld, by his 
mysterious sacrifice, the dignity of that government 
which the children of Adam had disowned, he invited 
all to come to him and be saved — should this message 
be brought to the door of the most honourable man 
upon earth, and he turn in contempt and hostility 
away from it, has not that man posted himself more 
firmly than ever on the ground of rebellion ? Though 



20 CHAXMERS DISCOURSES, 

an unsullied integrity should rest upon all his transac- 
tions, and the homage of confidence and respect be 
awarded to him from every quarter of society, has not 
this man, by slighting the overtures of reconciliation, 
just plunged himself the deeper in the guilt of a wilful 
and determined ungodliness ? Has not the creature 
exalted itself above the Creator ; and in the pride of 
those accomplishments, which never would have in- 
vested his person had not they come to him from 
above, has he not, in the act of resisting the gospel, 
aggravated the provocation of his whole previous de- 
fiance to the author of it ? 

Thus much for all that is amiable, and for all that 
is manly, in the accomplishments of nature, when dis- 
joined from the faith of Christianity. They take up 
a separate residence in the human character from the 
principle of godliness. Anterior to this religion, they 
go not to alleviate the guilt of our departure from the 
living God ; and subsequently to this religion, they 
may blazon the character of him who stands out against 
it : but on the principles of a most clear and intelligent 
equity, they never can shield him from the condemna- 
tion and the curse of those who have neglected the 
great salvation. 

The doctrine of the New Testament will bear to be 
confronted with all that can be met or noticed on the 
face of human society. And we speak most confident- 
ly, to the experience of many who now hear us, when 
we i^ay, that often, in the course of their manifold 
transactions, have they met the man, whom the bri- 
bery of no advantage whatever could seduge into the 



CIIALiMER'S DISCOURSES. 21 

slightest deviation fr6m the path of integrity— the man, 
who felt his nature within him put into a state of the 
most painful indignancy, at every thing that bore upon 
it the character of a sneaking or dishonourable artifice 
— the man, who positively could not be at rest under 
the consciousness that he had ever betrayed, even to 
his own heart, the remotest symptom of such an in- 
clination — and whom, therefore, the unaided law of 
justice and of truth has placed on a high and deserved 
eminence in the walks of honourable merchandise. 

Let us not withhold from this character the tribute 
of its most rightful admiration ; but let us further ask, 
if, with all that he thus possessed of native feeling and 
constitutional integrity, you have never observed in any 
such individual an utter emptiness of religion ; and 
that God is not in all his thoughts ; and that, when he 
does what happens to be at one with the will of the 
Lawgiver, it is not because he is impelled to it by 
a sense of its being the will of the Lawgiver, but 
because he is impelled to it by the working fof his 
own instinctive sensibilities ; and that, however fortu- 
nate, or however estimable these sensibilities are, they 
still consist with the habit of a mind that is In a 
state of total indifference about God ? Have you never 
read in your own character, or in the observed char- 
acter of others, that the claims of the Divinity may 
be entirely forgotten by the very man to whom society 
around him yield, and rightly yield, the homage of 
an unsullied and honourable reputation ; that this 
man may have all his foundations in the world ; 
that every security on which he rests, and every en- 
joyment upon which his heart is set, lieth on this 



22 CHALMER'5 DISCOURSES. 

side of death ; that a sense of the coming day on 
which God is to enter into judgment with him, is, to 
every purpose of practical ascendency, as good as ex- 
punged altogether from his bosom ; that he is far in 
desire, and far in enjoyment, and far in habitual 
contemplation, away from that God who is not far 
from any one of us ; that his extending credit, and 
his brightening prosperity, and his magnificent retreat 
from business, with all the splendour of its accom- 
modations — that these are the futurities at which he 
terminates ; and that he goes not in thought beyond 
them to that eternity, which, in the flight of a few 
little years, will absorb all, and annihilate all ? In 
a word, have you never observed the man, who, with 
all that was right in mercantile principle, and all 
that was open and unimpeachable in the habit of 
his mercantile transactions, lived in a state of utter 
estrangement from the concerns of immortality ? who, 
in reference to God, persisted, from one year to anoth- 
er, in the spirit of a deep slumber ? who, in reference 
to the man that tries to awaken him out of his lethargy, 
recoils, with the most sensitive dislike, from the faith- 
fulness of his ministrations ? who, in reference to the 
Book which tells him of his nakedness and his guilt, 
never consults it with one practical aim, and never 
tries to penetrate beyond that aspect of mysterious- 
ness which it holds out to an undiscerning world ? who 
attends not church, or attends it with all the lifeless- 
ness of a form ? who reads not his Bible, or reads it in 
the discharge of a self-prescribed and unfruitful task ? 
who prays not, or prays with the mockery of an un- 
meaning observation ? and, in one word, who while 
surrounded by all those testimonies which give to man 



CHALMERS DISCOURSES. 2S 

a place of moral distinction among his fellows, is liv- 
ing in utter carelessness about God, and about all the 
avenues which lead to him ? 

Now, attend for a moment to what that is which the 
man has, and to what that is which he has not. He 
has an attribute of character which is in itself pure, 
and lovely, and honourable, and of good report. He 
has a natural principle of integrity; and under its im- 
pulse he may be carried forward to such fine exhibi- 
tions of himself, as are worthy of all admiration. It 
is very noble, when the simple utterance of his word 
carries as much security along with it, as if he had ac- 
companied that utterance by the signatures, and the 
securities, and the legal obligations, which are required 
of other men. It might tempt one to be proud of his 
species when he looks at the faith that is put in him 
by a distant correspondent, who, without one other 
hold of him than his honour, consigns to him the wealth 
of a whole flotilla, and sleeps in the confidence that it 
is safe. It is indeed an animating thought, amid the 
gloom of this world's depravity, when we behold the 
credit which one man puts in another, though separa- 
ted by oceans and by continents ; when he fixes the 
anchor of a sure and steady dependence on the re- 
ported honesty of one whom he never saw ; when, 
with ail his fears for the treachery of the varied ele- 
ments, through which his property has to pass, he 
knows, that should it only arrive at the door of its 
destined agent, all his fears and all his suspicions may 
be at an end. We know nothing finer than such an 
act of homage from one human being to another, when 
perhaps the diameter of the globe is between them : 



^4 CHALHEK'S DISCOURSES. 

nor do we think that either the renown of her victo- 
ries, or the wisdom of her counsels, so signalizes the 
country in which we live, as does the honourable deal- 
ing of her merchants ; that all the glories of British 
policy, and British valour, are far eclipsed by the moral 
splendour which British faith has thrown over the 
name and the character of our nation ; nor has she 
gathered so proud a distinction from all the tributaries 
of her power, as she has done from the awarded confi- 
dence of those men of all tribes, and colours, and lan- 
guages, who look to our agency for the most faithful 
of all management, and to our keeping for the mo&t 
unviolable of all custody. \ 

There is no denying, then, the very extended preva-- 
lence of a principle of integrity in the commercial 
world ; and he who has such a principle within him^ 
has that to which all the epithets of our text may rightly 
be appropriated. But it is just as impossible to deny^ 
that, with this thing which he has, there may be another 
thing which he has not. He may not have one du- 
teous feeling of reverence which points upward to God. 
He may not have one wish, or one anticipation, which 
points forward to eternity. He may not have any 
sense of dependence on the Being who sustains him ; 
and who gave him his very principle of honour, as 
part of that interior furniture which he has put into his 
bosom ; and who surrounded him with the theatre on 
which he has come forward with the finest and most 
illustrious displays of it ; and who set the whole ma- 
chinery of his sentiment and action a-going ; and 
can, by a single word of his power, bid it cease from 
the variety, and cease from the gracefulness, of its 



movements. In other words, he is a^^man of integrity, 
and yet he is a man of ungodliness. He is a man 
born for the confidence and the admiration of his fel- 
lows, and yet a man whom his maker can charge with 
utter defection from all the principles of a spiritual 
obedience. He is a man whose virtues have blazoned 
his own character in time, and have upheld the inter- 
ests of society, and yet a man who has not, by one 
movement of principle, brought himself nearer to the 
kingdom of heaven, than the most profligate of the 
species. The condemnation, that he is an alien from 
God rests upon him in all ihe weight of its unmitigated 
severity. The threat, that they who forget God shall 
be turned into hell, will on the great day of its fell and 
sweeping operation, involve him among the wretched 
outcasts of eternity. That God from whom, while in 
the world, he withheld every due offering of gratitude, 
and remembrance, and universal subordination of habit 
and of desire, will show him to his face, how under the 
delusive garb of such sympathies as drew upon him the 
love of his acquaintances, and of such integrities as 
drew^ upon him their respect and their confidence, he 
was in fact a determined rebel against (he authority of 
heaven ; that not one commandment of the law, in the 
true extent of its interpretation, was ever fulfilled by 
him ; that the pervading principle of obedience to this 
law, which is love to God, never had its ascendency 
over him ; that the beseeching voice of the Lawgiver, 
so offended and so insulted — -but who, nevertheless, de- 
vised in love a way of reconciliation for the guilty, 
never had the effect of recalling him ; that, in fact, he 
neither had a wish for the friendship of God, nor cher- 
ished the hope of enjoying him— and that therefore, as 

4 



2Q ' CHALMERS DlSCOUUSJiS. 

he lived without hope, so he lived without God in the 
world ; finding all his desire, and all his sufficiency, to 
be somewhere else, than in that favour which is better 
than life ; and so, in addition to the curse of having 
continued not in all the words of the book of God's 
law to do them, entailing upon himself the mighty aggra- 
vation of having neglected all the offers of his gospel. 

We say, then, of this natural virtue, what our Sav- 
iour said of the virtue of the Pharisees, many of whom 
were not extortioners, as other men-— that, verily, it 
hath its reward. When disjoined from a sense of God, 
it is of no religious estimation whatever ; nor will 
it lead to any religious blessing, either in time or in 
eternity. It has, however, its enjoyments annexed to 
it, just as a fine taste has its enjoyments annexed to it ; 
and in these is it abundantly rewarded. It is exempted 
from that painful ness of inward feeling which nature 
has annexed to every act of departure from honesty. 
It is sustained by a conscious sense of rectitude and 
elevation. It is gratified by the homage of society ; 
the members of which are ever ready to award the 
tribute of acknowledgment to those virtues that sup- 
port the interests of society. And, finally, it may be 
said, that prosperity, with some occasional variations 
is the general accompaniment of that credit, which 
every man of undeviating justice is sure to draw around 
him. But what reward, will you tell us is due to him 
on the great day of the manifestation of God's right- 
eousness, when, in fact, he has done nothing unto God ? 
What recompense can be awarded to him out of those 
books which are then to be opened, and in which he 
stands recorded as a man overcharaed with the guilt of 



CHALMEfrS DISCQCRSKS.. 27 

spiritual idolatry ? How shall God grant unto him 
the reward of a servant, when the service of God was 
not the principle of his doings in the world ; and when 
neither the justice he rendered to others, nor the sen- 
sibility that he felt for them, bore the slightest charac- 
ter of an offering to his maker ? 

But wherever the religious principle has taken 
possession of the mind, it animates these virtues with 
a new spirit ; and when so animated, all such things as 
are pure, and lovely, and just, and true, and honest, 
and of good report, have a religious importance and 
character belonging to them. The text forms part of 
an epistle addressed to all the saints in Christ Jesus, 
which were at Philippi ; and the lesson of the text is 
matter of direct and authoritative enforcement, on all 
who are saints in Christ Jesus at the present day* 
Christianity, with the weight of its positive sanctions 
on the side of what is amiable and honourable in hu* 
man virtue, causes such an influence to rest on the 
character of its genuine disciples, that, on the ground 
both of inflexible justice and ever-breathing charity, 
they are ever sure to leave the vast majority of the 
world behind them. Simplicity and godly sincerity 
form essential ingredients of that peculiarity by which 
they stand signalized in the midst of an ungodly gener- 
ation. The true friends of the gospel, tremblingly 
alive to the honour of their master's cause, blush for 
the disgrace that has been brought on it by men who 
keep its sabbaths, and yield an ostentatious homage to 
its doctrines and its sacraments. They utterly disclaim 
all fellowship with that vile association of cant and of 
duplicity, which has sometimes been exemplified, to 



•is CHALMKHvS DISCOUKSE,'-^ 

the triumph of the enemies of reUgion ; and they botii 
feel the solemn trutli, and act on the authority of the 
saying, that neither thieves, nor liars, nor extortioners, 
nor unrighteous persons, have any part in the kingdom 
of Christ and of God. 



DISCOURSE 11« 



THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY IN AIDING AND AUGMENTING 
THE MERCANTILE VIRTUES 



'■' For he that in these things serveth Christ is acceptable to God, and 
approved of men."— Rom. xiv. 18, 

We have already asserted the natural existence of 
such principles in the heart of man, as lead him to 
many graceful and to many honourable exhibitions of 
character. We have further asserted, that this formed 
no deduction whatever from that article of orthodoxy 
which affirms the utter depravity of our nature ; that 
the essence of this depravity lies in man having broken 
loose from the authority of God, and delivered himself 
wholly up to the guidance of his own inclinations ; 
that though some of these inclinations are in them- 
selves amiable features of human character, and point 
in their effects to what is most useful to human society, 
yet devoid as they all are of any reference to the will 
and to the rightful sovereignty of the Supreme Beings 
they could not avert, or even so much as alleviate, that 
charge of ungodliness, which may be fully carried 
round amongst all the sons and daughters of the spe- 
cies ; that they furnish not the materials of any valid 
or satisfactory answer to the question, " What hast 
thou done unto God ?" and that whether they are the 
desires of a native rectitude, or the desires of an in- 
stinctive benevolence, they go not to purge away the 



,:iO CHALMER'S DISCOlJItSKS. 

guilt of having no love, and no care, for the Being who 
formed and who sustains us. 

But what is more. If the virtues and accomplish- 
ments of nature are at all to be admitted into the con- 
troversy between God and man, instead of forming 
any abatement upon the enormity of our guilt, they 
stamp upon it the reproach of a still deeper and more 
determined ingratitude. Let us conceive it possible, 
for a moment, that the beautiful personifications of 
scripture were all realized ; that the trees of the forest 
clapped their hands unto God, and that the isles were 
glad at his presence ; that the little hills shouted on 
every side, and the valleys covered over with corn sent 
forth their notes of rejoicing ; that the sun and the 
moon praised him, and the stars of light joined in the 
solemn adoration ; that the voice of glory to God was 
heard from every mountain and from every water- 
fall ; and that all nature, animated throughout by the 
consciousness of a pervading and a presiding Deity, 
burst into one loud and universal song of gratulation. 
Would not a strain of greater loftiness be heard to as- 
cend from those regions where the all-working God 
had left the traces of his own immensity, than from the 
tamer and the humbler scenery of an ordinary land- 
scape ? Would not you look for a gladder acclamation 
from the fertile field, than from the arid waste, where 
no character of grandeur made up for the barrenness 
that was around you? Would not the goodly, tree, 
compassed about with the glories of its summer foliage, 
lift up an anthem of louder gratitude, than the lowly 
shrub that grew beneath it? Would not the flower, 
from whose leaves everv hue of loveliness was reflected. 



UHALMERS DlSCOLfKSEb. ,}{ 

send forth a sweeter rapture than the russet weed, 
which never drew the eye of any admiring passenger ? 
And in a word, wherever you saw the towering emin- 
ences of nature, or the garniture of her more rich and 
beauteous adornments, would it not be there that you 
looked for the deepest tones of devotion, or there for 
the tenderest and most exquisite of its melodies ? 

There is both the sublime of character, and the 
beauteous of character, exemplified upon man. We 
have the one in that high sense of honour, which no 
interest and no terror can seduce from any of its obli- 
gations. We have the other in that kindliness of feel- 
ing, which one look, or one sigh, of imploring distress, 
can touch into Hveliest sympathy. Only grant, that 
we have nothing either in the constitution of our spirits? 
or in the structure of our bodies, which we did not re- 
ceive ; and that mind, with all its varieties, is as much 
the product of a creating hand, as matter in all its 
modifications ; and then, on the face of human society, 
do we witness all the gradations of a moral scenery, 
which may be directly referred to the operation of him 
w^ho worketh all in all. It is our belief, that, as to any 
effectual sense of God, there is as deep a slumber 
throughout the whole of this world's living and rational 
generations, as there is throughout all the diversities of 
its mute and unconscious materialism ; and that to 
make our alienated spirits again alive unto the Father 
of them, calls for as distinct and as miraculous an exer- 
tion of the Divinity, as would need to be put forth in 
the act of turning stones into the children of Abraham. 
Conceive this to be done then — and that a quickening 
:Tnd a realizing sense of the Dcitv uervaded all the men 



of our species— and that each knew how to refer his 
own endowments, with an ade<|uate expression of 
gratitude to the unseen author of them — from whom 
we ask, of all these various individuals, would you look 
for the halleluiahs of devoutest ecstacy ^ Would it not 
be from him whom God had arrayed in the splendour 
of nature's brightest accomplishments ? Would it not 
be from him, with whose constitutional feelings the 
movements of honour and benevolence were in fullest 
harmony ? Would it not be from him whom his 
maker had cast into the happiest mould, and attempe- 
red into sweetest unison with all that was kind, and 
generous, and lovely, and ennobled by the loftiest 
emotions, and raised above his fellows into the finest 
spectacle of all that was graceful, and all that was 
manly ? Surely, if the possession of these moralities be 
just another theme of acknowledgment to the Lord of 
the spirits of all flesh, then, if the acknowledgment be 
withheld, and these moralities have taken up their 
residence in the bosom of him who is utterly devoid 
of piety, they go to aggravate the reproach of his in- 
gratitude ; and to prove, that, of all the men upon 
earth who are far from God, he stands at the widest 
distance^ he remains proof against the weightiest 
claims, and he, of the dead in trespasses and sins, is the 
most profoundly asleep to the call of religion, and to 
the supremacy of its righteous obligations. 

It is by argument such as this, that we would attempt 
to convince of sin those who have a righteousness that 
is without godliness ; and to prove, that, with the 
possession of such things as are pure, and lovel}^ and 
hoBcst, and of good report, they in fact can only be ad- 



CHALMER'S DISCOURSES., 33 

mitted to reconciliation with God, on the same footing 
with the most w orthless and profligate of the species : 
and to demonstrate, that they are in the very same 
state of need and of nakedness, and are therefore chil- 
dren of wrath, even as others ; that it is only through 
faith in the preaching of the gospel of our Lord Jesus 
Christ that they can be saved ; and that, unless brought 
down from the delusive eminency of their own conscious 
attainments, they take their forgiveness through the 
blood of the Redeemer, and their sanctification through 
the spirit which is at his giving, they shall obtain no 
part in that inheritance which is incorruptible and un* 
defiled, and which fadeth not away. 

But the gospel of Jesus Christ does something more 
than hold out a refuge to the guilty. It takes all those 
who accept of its overtures under its supreme and ex- 
clusive direction. It keeps by them in the way of 
counsel, and exhortation, and constant superintendence. 
The grace which it reveals, is a grace which not merely 
saves all men, but which teaches all men. He who is 
the proposed Saviour, also claims to be the alone master 
of those who put their trust in him. His cognizance 
extends itself over the whole line of their history; and 
there is not an affection of their heart, or a. deed of 
their visible conduct, over which he does not assert the 
right of an authority that is above all control, and that 
refuses all rivalship. 

Now, we want to point your attention to a distinc- 
tion which obtains between one set and another set of 
his requirements. By the former, we are enjoined to 
practise certain virtues, which, separately from his in- 

5 



34 c;hai;mer'3 discqukses, 

junction altogether, are in great demand, and in great re- 
verence, amongst the members of society — such as com- 
passion, and generosity, and justice, and truth ; which, 
independently of the religious sanction they obtain from 
the law of the Saviour, are in themselves so lovely, and 
so honourable, and of such good report, that they are 
ever sure to carry general applause along with them, 
and thus to combine both the characteristics of our 
text — that he who in these things serveth Christ, is 
both acceptable to God, and approved of men. 

But there is another set of requirements, where the 
will of God, instead of being seconded by the ap- 
plause of men, is utterly at variance with it. There 
are some who can admire the generous sacrifices 
that are made to truth or to friendship, but who, 
without one opposing scruple, abandon themselves 
to all the excesses of riot and festivity, and are 
therefore the last to admire the puritanic sobriety 
of him whom they cannot tempt to put his chastity 
or his temperance away from him ; though the same 
God, who bids us lie not one to another, also bids 
us keep the body under subjection, and to abstain 
from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul. Again, 
there are. some in whose eyes an unvitiated delicacy 
looks a beauteous and an interesting spectacle, and 
an undeviating self-control looks a manly and respec- 
table accomplishment ; but who have no taste in them- 
selves, and no admiration in others, for the more direct 
exercises of religion ; and who positively hate the strict 
and unbending preciseness of those who join in every 
ordinance, and on every returning night celebrate the 
praises of God in their family ; and that, though the 



CHALMERS DISCOURSES. 35 

lieavenly Lawgiver, who tells us to live righteously 
and soberly, tells us also to live godly in the present 
evil world. And lastly, there are some who have not 
merely a toleration, but a liking for all the decencies 
of an established observation ; but who, with the ho- 
mage they pay to sabbaths and to sacraments, nauseate 
the Christian principle in the supreme and regenera- 
ting vitality, of its influences ; who, under a general 
religiousness of aspect, are still in fact the children of 
the world — and therefore hate the children of light in 
all that is peculiar and essentially characteristic of that 
high designation ; who understand not what is meant 
by having our conversation in heaven ; and utter 
strangers to the separated w alk, and the spiritual ex- 
ercises, and the humble devotedness, and the conse- 
crated affections, of the new creature in Jesus Christ, 
shrink from them altogether as from the extravagan- 
cies of a fanaticism in which they have no share, and 
with which they can have no sympathy — and all this, 
though the same scripture which prescribes the exer- 
cises of household and of public religion, lays claim to 
an undivided authority over all the desires and affec- 
tions of the soul ; and will admit of no compromise be= 
tween God and the w^orld ; and insists upon an utter 
deadness to the one, and a most vehement sensibility 
to the other ; and elevates the standard of loyalty to 
the Father of our Spirits, to the lofty pitch of loving 
him with all our strength, and of doing all things to 
his glory* 

Let these examples serve to impress a real and ex« 
perimental distinction which obtains between two sets 
of virtues; betweea..those which possess the single in- 



36 CHALMKR'S DISCOURSES, 

gredlent of being approved by God, while ihey want 
the ingredient of being also acceptable unto men — and 
those which possess both these ingredients, and to the 
observance of which, therefore, we may be carried by 
a regard to the will of God, without any reference to 
the opinion of men — :or by a regard to the opinion of 
men, without any reference to the will of God, 
Among the first class of virtues we would assign a 
foremost place to all those inw^ard and spiritual graces 
which enter into the obedience of the affections — 
highly approved of God, but not at all acceptable to 
the general taste, or carrying along with them the 
general congeniality of the world. And then, though 
they do not possess the ingredient of God's approbation 
in a way so separate and unmixed, we would say that 
abstinence from profane language, and attendance up- 
on church, and a strict keeping of the sabbath, and the 
exercises of family worship, and the more rigid de- 
grees of sobriety, and a fearful avoidance of every en- 
croachment on temperance or chastity, rank more ap- 
propriately with the first than with the second class of 
virtues; for though there be many in society who 
have no religion, and yet to whom several of these 
virtues are acceptable, yet you will allow, that they do 
not convey such a universal popularity along with them, 
as certain other virtues which belong indisputably to 
the second class. These are the virtues which have a 
more obvious and immediate bearing on the interest of 
society — such as the truth which is punctual to all its 
engagements, and the honour which never disappoints 
the confidence it has inspired, and the compassion 
which cannot look unmoved at any of the symptoms 
of human wretchedness, and the generosity which 



CHALMERS DISCOURSES. 37 

scatters unsparingly around it. These are virtues 
which God has enjoined, and in behalf of which man 
lifts the testimony of a loud and ready admiration — 
virtues in which there is a meeting and a combining 
of both the properties of our text ; so that he who in 
these things serveth Christ, is both approved of God, 
and acceptable unto men. 

Let a steady hold be kept of this distinction, and it 
willbe found capable of being turned to a very useful 
application, both to the object of illustrating principle, 
and to the important object of detecting character. 
For this purpose, let us carry the distinction along with 
us, and make it subservient to the establishment of two 
or three successive observations. 

First. A man may possess, to a considerable extent, 
the second class of virtues, and not possess so much 
as one iota of the religious principle ; and that, among 
other reasons, because a man may feel a value for one 
of the attributes which belongs to this class of virtues, 
and have no value whatever for the other attribute. 
If justice be both approved by God, and acceptable to 
men, he may on the latter property alone, be induced 
to the strictest maintenance of this virtue — and that 
without suffering its former property to have any prac- 
tical influence whatever on any of his habits, or any 
of his determinations : and the same with every other 
virtue belonging to this second class. As residing in 
his character, there may not be the ingredient of god- 
liness in any one of them. He may be well reported 
on account of them by men ; but with God he may 
lie under as fearful a severity of reckoning, as if he 



38 CHALMERS DISCOURSES. 

wanted them altogether. Surely, it does not go to al- 
leviate the vvithdrawment of your homage from God? 
that you have such an homage to the opinion of men^ 
as influences you to do things, to the doing of which the 
law of God is not able to influence you. It cannot be 
said to palliate the revolting of your inclinations from 
the Creator, that you have transferred them all to the 
creature ; and given an ascendency to the voice of hu- 
man reputation, which you have refused to the voice 
and authority of your Lawgiver in heaven. Your 
want of subordination to him, is surely not made up 
by the respectful subordination that you render to the 
laste or the judgment of society. And in addition to 
this, we would have you to remember, that though 
other constitutional principles, besides a regard to the 
opinion of others, helped to form the virtues of the 
second class upon your character ; though compassion, 
and generosity, and truth, would have broken out into 
full and flourishing display upon you, and that, just 
because you had a native sensibility, or a native love 
of rectitude ; yet, if the first ingredient be wanting^ 
if a regard to the approbation of God have no 
share in the production of the moral accomplish- 
ment — then all the morality you can pretend to, is 
of as little religious estimation, and is as utterly dis- 
connected with the rewards of religion, as all the 
elegance of taste you can pretend to, or all the raptured 
love of music you can pretend to, or all the vigour 
and dexterity of bodily exercise you can pretend to. 
All these, in reference to the great question of immor- 
tality, profit but little ; and it is goodliness alone that 
is profitable unto all things. It is upon this considera- 
tion that we would have you to open your eyes to the 



OHALMER'3 DISCOURSES. 3^ 

nakedness of your condition in the sigiit of God ; to 
look to the full weight of the charge that he may pre- 
fer against you; to estimate the fearful extent of the 
deficiency under which you labour ; to resist the delu- 
sive whispering of peace, when there is no peace ; and 
to understand, that the wrath of God abideth on every 
child of nature, however rich he may be in the virtues 
and accomplishments of nature. 

But again. This view of the distinction between 
the two sets of virtues, will serve to explain how it is, 
that, in the act of turning unto God, the one class of 
them appears to gather more copiously, and more 
conspicuously, upon the front of a renewed character, 
than the other class ; how it is, that the former wear a 
more unequivocal aspect of religiousness than the 
latter ; how it is, that an air of gravity, and decency, 
and seriousness, looks to be more in alliance with 
sanctity, than the air either of open integrity, or of 
smiling benevolence ; how it is, that the most osten- 
sible change in the habit of a converted profligate, is 
that change in virtpe of which he v^ithdraws himself 
from the companions of his licentiousness ; and that 
to renounce the dissipations of his former life, stands 
far more frequently, or, at least, far more visibly, 
associated with the act of putting on Christianity, than 
to renounce the dishonesties of his former life. It is 
true, that, by the law of the gospel, he is laid as strictly 
under the authority of the commandment to live righ- 
teously, as of the commandment to live soberly. But 
there is a compound character in those virtues which 
are merely social ; and the presence of the one in- 
gredient serves to throw into the shade, or to disguise 



40 CHALMERS DISCOURSES. 

altogether, the presence of the other ingredient. There 
is a greater number of irreligious men, who are at the 
same time just in their dealings, than there is of irreli- 
gious men, who are at the same time pure and tempe- 
rate in their habits ; and therefore it is, that justice^ 
even the most scrupulous, is not so specifical, and, of 
course, not so satisfying a mark of religion, as is a 
tsobriety that is rigid and unviolable. And all this 
helps to explain how it is, that when a man comes un- 
der the power of religion, to abandon the levities of 
his past conduct is an event which stands far more 
noticeably out upon him, at this stage of his history, 
thati to abandon the iniquities of his past conduct : 
that the most characteristic transformation which takes 
place at such a time, is a transformation from thought- 
lessness, and from licentious gaiety, and from the fes- 
tive indulgencies of those with whom he wont to run to 
all those excesses of riot, of which the Apostle says, 
that they which do these things shall not inherit the 
kingdom of God : for even then, and in the very midst 
of all his impiety, he may have been kind-hearted, and 
there might be no room upon his |)erson for a visible 
transformation from inhiimanity of character ; even 
then, he may have been honourable, and there might 
be as little room for a visible transformation from 
fraud ulency of character. 

Thirdly. Nothing is more obvious than the antip- 
athy that is felt by a certain class of religionists against 
the preaching of good works ; and the antipathy is as- 
suredly well and warrantably grounded, when it is 
such a preaching as goes to reduce the importance, or 
to infringe upon the simplicity, of the great doctrine of 



CHAUVIEK'S DISCOURSES. 4\ 

justilicatioii by faith. But along with this, may there 
not be remarked the toleration with which they wall 
listen to a discourse upon one set of good works, and 
the evident coldness and dislike with which they lis- 
ten to a discourse on another set of them ; how a 
pointed remonstrance against sabbath breaking sounds 
in their ears, as if more in character from the pulpit, 
than a pointed remonstrance against the commission 
of theft, or the speaking of evil ; how an eulogium on 
the observance of family w^orship feels, in their taste 
to be more impregnated with the spirit of sacredness 
than an eulogium on the virtues of the shop, or of the 
market-place ; and that, while the one is approven of 
as having about it the solemn and the suitable charac- 
teristics of godUness, the other is stigmatized as a piece 
of barren, heartless, heathenish, and philosophic mo- 
I'ality ? Now, this antipathy to the preaching of the 
latter species of good works, has something peculiar in 
it. It is not enough to say, that it arises from a sensi- 
tive alarm about the stability of the doctrine of justifi- 
cation ; for let it be observed, that this doctrine stands 
opposed to the merit not of one particular class of 
performances, but to the merit of all perform- 
ances whatsoever. It is just as unscriptural a de- 
traction from the great truth of salvation by faith, 
to rest our acceptance with God on the duties of 
prayer, or of rigid sabbath keeping, or of strict 
and untainted sobriety, as to rest it on the punc- 
tual fulfilment of all your bargains, and on the extent 
of your manifold liberalities. It is not, then, a mere 
zeal about the gr^at article of justification which lies 
at the bottom of that peculiar aversion that is fejt 
towards a sermon on some social or humane accom- 

8 



42 CHA.LMER'S DISCOURSES. 

Dlishment : and that is not felt towards a sermon on 
sober-mindedness, or a sermon on the observation of 

the sacrament, or a sermon on any of those perform- 
ances which bear a more direct and exclusive reference 
to God. We shall find the explanation of this phe* 
nomenon, which often presents itself in the religious 
world, in that distinction of which we have just re- 
quired that it should b^ kept in steady hold, and fol-. 
lowed into its various applications. The aversion in 
question is often, in fact, a well founded aversion, to 
a topic, which, though religious in the matter of it, 
may, from the way in which it is proposed, be alto- 
gether secular in the principle of it. It is resistance 
to what is deemed, and justly deemed, an act of usur- 
pation on the part of certain virtues, which, when un- 
animated by a sentiment of godliness, are entitled to 
no place whatever in the ministrations of the gospel of 
Christ. It proceeds from a most enlightened fear, lest 
that should be held to make up the whole of religion, 
which is in fact utterly devoid of the spirit of religion ; 
and from a true and tender apprehension, lest, on the 
possession of certain accomplishments, which secure a 
fleeting credit throughout the little hour of this world's 
history, deluded man should look forward to his eterni- 
ty w^ith hope, and upward to his God with complacen- 
cy — while he carries not on his forehead one vestige 
of the character of heaven, one lineament of the aspect 
of godliness. 

And lastly. The first class of virtues bear the char- 
acter of religiousness more strongly, just because they 
bear that character more singly. The people who 
are without, might, no doubt, see in every real Chris- 
tian the virtues of the second class also ; but these 



CHALMERS DISCOURSES 43. 

virtues do not belong to them peculiarly and exclusively. 
For though it be true, that every religious man must 
be honest, the converse does not follow, that every 
honest man must be religious. And it is because the 
social accomplishments do not form the specific, that 
neither do they form the most prominent .and distin- 
guishing marks of Ghristianily. They may also be 
recognized as features in the character of men, who 
utterly repudiate the whole style and doctrine of the 
New Testament ; and hence a very prevalent impres- 
sion in society, that the faith of the gospel does not bear 
so powerfully and so directly on the relative virtues 
of human conduct. A few instances of hypocrisy 
amongst the more serious professors of our faith, serve 
to rivet the impression, and to give it perpetuity in the 
world. One single example, indeed, of sanctimonious 
duplicity, will suffice, in the judgment of many, to co- 
ver the whole of vital and orthodox Christianity with 
disgrace. The report of it will be borne in triumph 
amongst the companies of the irreligious. The man 
who pays no homage to sabbaths or to sacraments, 
will be contrasted in the open, liberal, and manly style, 
of all his transactions, with the low cunning of this 
drivelling methodistical pretender ; and the loud laugh 
of a multitude of scorners, will give a force and a swell 
to this public outcry against the whole character of the 
sainthood. 

Now, this delusion on the part of the unbelieving 
world is very natural, and ought not to excite our 
astonishment. We are not surprised, from the reasons 
already adverted to, that the truth and the justice, and 
the humanity, and the moral loveliness, which do in 



44 CIIALMER'3 DISC0UR;?K3. 

fact belong to every new creature in Jesus Christ our 
Lo;*d, should miss their observation ; or, at least, fail 
to be recognized among the other more obvious charac- 
teristics into which believers have been translated by 
the faith of the gospel. But, on this very subject there 
is a tendency to delusion on the part of the disciples 
of the faith. Thev need to be reminded of the solemn 
and indispensable religiousness of the second class of 
virtues. They need to be told, that though these vir- 
tiies do possess the one ingredient of being approved 
by men, and may, on this single account, be found to 
reside in the characters of those who live without God 
— yet, that they also possess the other ingredient of 
being acceptable unto God ; and, on this latter account, 
should be made the subjects of their most strenuous 
cultivation. They must not lose sight of the one in- 
gredient in the other; or stigmatize, as so many fruit* 
less and insignificant morahties, those virtues which 
enter as component parts into the service of Christ; so 
that he who in these things serveth Christ, is both ac- 
ceptable to God, and approved by men. They must 
not expend all their warmth on the high and peculiar 
doctrine of the New Testament, while thev offer a 
cold and reluctant admission to the practical duties of 
the New Testament. The Apostle has bound the one 
to the other by a tie of immediate connexion. Where- 
fore, lie not one to another, as ye have put off the old 
man and his deeds, and put on the new man, which 
is formed after the image of God, in righteousness and 
true holiness. Here the very obvious and popular ac- 
complishment of truth is grafted on the very peculiar 
doctrine of regeneration : and you altogether mistake 
the kind of transforming influence which the faith of 



CHALMERS DISCOURSE,?.. 4j 

the gospel brings along with it, if you think that up- 
rightness of character does not emerge at the same 
time with godUness of character ; or that the virtues 
of society do not form upon the believer into as rich 
and varied an assemblage, as do the virtues of the 
sanctuary ; or that, while he puts on those graces which 
are singly acceptable to God, he falls behind in any of 
those graces which are both acceptable to God, and 
approved of men. 

Let, therefore, every pretender to Christianity vindi- 
cate this assertion by his own personal history in the 
world. Let him not lay his godliness aside, when he 
is done with the morning devotion of his family ; but 
carry it abroad with him, and make it his companion 
and his guide through the whole business of the day ; 
always bearing in his heart the sentiment, that thou 
God seest me ; and remembering, that there is not one 
hour that can flow, or one occasion that can cast up, 
w^here his law is not present with some imperious exac- 
tion or other. It is false, that the principle of Christian 
sanctification possesses no influence over the familiari- 
ties of civil and ordinary life. It is altogether false, 
that godliness is a virtue of such a lofty and monastic 
order, as to hold its dominion only over the solemnities 
of worship, or over the solitudes of prayer and spiritual 
contemplation. If it be substantially a grace within 
us at all, it will give a direction and a colour to the 
whole of our path in society. There is not one con- 
ceivable transaction, amongst all the manifold varie- 
ties of human employment, which it is not fitted to 
animate by its spirit. There is nothing that meets us 
too homely, to be beyond the reach of obtaining, from 



4(j CHALMER'5 DISCOURSES. 

its influence, the stamp of something celestial. It of- 
fers to take the whole man under its ascendency, and to 
subordinate all his movements : nor does it hold the 
place which rightfully belongs to it, till it be vested 
with a presiding authority over the entire system of 
human affairs. And therefore it is, that the preacher 
is not bringing down Christianity — he is only sending 
it abroad over the field of its legitimate operation, when 
he goes with it to your counting-houses, and there re- 
bukes every selfish inclination that would carry you 
ever so little within the limits of fraudulency ; when he 
enters into your chambers of agency, and there detects 
the character of falsehood, which lurks under all the 
plausibility of your multiplied and excessive charges ; 
when he repairs to the crowded market-place, and 
pronounces of every bargain, over which truth, in all 
the strictness of quakerism, has not presided, that it is 
tainted with moral evil ; when he looks into your 
shops, and, in listening to the contest of argument be- 
tween him who magnifies his article, and him who pre- 
tends to undervalue it, he calls it the contest of avarice, 
broken loose from the restraints of integrity. He is 
not^ by all this, vulgarizing religion, or giving it the 
hue and the character of earthliness. He is only as- 
serting the might and the universality of its sole pre- 
eminence over man. And therefore it is, that if possi- 
ble to solemnize his hearers to the practice of simplicity 
and godly sincerity in their dealings, he would try to 
make the odiousness of sin stand visibly out on every 
shade and modification of dishonesty ; and to assure 
them that if there be a place in our world, where the 
subtle evasion, and the dexterous imposition, and the 
sly but gainful concealment, and the report which mis- 



CHALMERS DISCOURSES. 47 

leads an inquirer, and the gloss which tempts the un- 
wary purchaser — ^are not only currently practised in 
the walks of merchandise, but, when not carried for- 
ward to the glare and the literality of falsehood, are 
beheld with general connivance ; if there be a place 
where the sense of morality has thus fallen, and all the 
nicer delicacies of conscience are overborne in the keen 
and ambitious rivalry of men hasting to be rich, and 
w holly given over to the idolatrous service of the God 
of this world — then that is the place, the smoke of 
whose iniquity rises beforie Him who sitteth on the 
throne, in a tide of deepest and most revolting abomi- 
nation. ^ 

And here we have to complain of the public injus- 
tice that is done to Christianity, when one of its osten- 
tatious professors has acted the hypocrite, and stands 
in disgraceful exposure before the eyes of the world. 
We advert to the readiness with which this is turned into 
a matt-er of general impeachment, against every appear- 
ance of seriousness ; and how loud the exclamation is 
against the religion of all who signalize themselves; 
and that, if the aspect of godliness be so very decided 
as to become an aspect of peculiarity, then is this pe- 
culiarity converted into a ground of distrust and suspi- 
cion against the bearer of it. Now, it so happens, 
that, in the midst of this world lying in wickedness, a 
man, to be a Christian at all, must signalize himself. 
Neither is he in a way of salvation, unless he be one of 
a very peculiar people ; nor w^ould we precipitately con- 
sign him to discredit, even though the peculiarity be so 
very glaring as to provoke the charge of methodism. 
But, instead of making one man's hypocrisy act as a 



415 CHALMERS UISCOUiiSES. 

drawback upon the reputation of a thousand, we sub- 
mit, if it would not be a fairer and more philosophical 
procedure, just to betake one's-self to the method of 
induction — to make a walking survey over the town^ 
and record an inventory of all the men in it who are 
so very far gone as to have the voice of psalms in their 
family ; or as to attend the meetings of fellowship for 
prayer ; or as scrupulously to abstain from all that is 
questionable in the amusements of the world ; or as, 
by any other marked and visible symptom whatever, 
to stand out to general observation as the members of 
a saintly and separated society. We know, that even 
of such there are a few, who, if Paul were alive, 
would move him to weep for the reproach they bring 
upon his master. But we also know, that the blind 
and impetuous world exaggerates the few into the 
many ; inverts the process of atonement altogether, by 
laying the sins of one man upon the multitude ; looks 
at their general aspect of sanctity, and is so engrossed 
with this single expression of character, as to be insen- 
sible to the noble uprightness, and the tender humanity 
with which this sanctity is associated. And therefore 
it is, that we offer the assertion, and challenge all to its 
most thorough and searching investigation, that the 
Christianity of these people, which many think does 
nothing but cant, and profess, and run after ordinances, 
has augmented their honesties and their liberalities, 
and that, tenfold beyond the average character of so- 
ciety; that these are the men we oftenest meet with in 
the mansions of poverty— and who look with the most 
wakeful eye over all the sufferings and necessities of 
our species — and who open their hand most widely in 
behalf of the imploring and the friendless — and to 



OHALMER'S LUSCOUiiSES. 49 

whom, in spite of all their mockery, the men of the 
world are sure, in the negociations of business, to award 
the readiest confidence — and who sustain the most 
splendid part in all those great movements of philan- 
throphy which bear on the general interests of man- 
kind — and who, with their eye full upon eternity, 
scatter the most abundant blessings over the fleeting 
pilgrimage of time — and who, while they hold their 
conversation in heaven, do most enrich the earth wc 
tread uj)on, with all those virtues which secure enjoy- 
ment to families, and uphold the order and prosperity 
of the commonwealth. 



DISCOURSE III, • 

THE POWER OF SELFISFINESS IN PROMOTING THE HONESTIES 
OF JHERCANTILE INTERCOURSE 



-' And if >ou do good to them ■which do good to you, what thank have 
ye ? for sinners also do even the same"' — Luke vi. 33. 

It is to be remarked of many of those duties, the 
performance of which confers the least distinction 
upon an individual, that they are at the same time the 
very duties, the violation of which would confer upon 
him the largest measure of obloquy and disgrace. 
Truth and justice do not serve to elevate a man so 
highly above the average morality of his species, as 
would generosity, or ardent friendship, or devoted and 
disinterested patriotism. The former are greatly more 
common than the latter; and, on that account, the 
presence of them is not so calculated to signalize the 
individual to whom they belong. But that is one ac- 
count, also, why the absence of them would make him 
a more monstrous exception to the general run of cha- 
racter in society. And, accordingly, while it is true, 
that there are more men of integrity in the world, than 
there are men of very wide and liberal beneficence — 
it is also true, that one act of falsehood, or one act of 
dishonesty, would stamp a far more burning infamy 
on the name of a transgressor, than any defect in those 
more heroic charities, and extraordinary virtues-^ of 
which humanity is capable. 



CHALMER'S DISCOURSES, 51 

So it is far more disgraceful not to be just to another, 
than not to he kind to him ; and, at the same time, an 
act of kindness may be held in higher positive estima- 
tion than an act of justice. The one is my right — nor 
is there any call for the homage of a particular testi- 
mony when it is rendered. Theother is additional to 
my right — the offering of a spontaneous good will, 
which I had no tide to exact ; and which, therefore, 
when rendered to me, excites in my bosom the cor- 
diality of a warmer acknowledgment. And yet, our 
Saviour, who knew what was in man, saw, that much 
of the apparent kindness of nature, was resolvable into 
the real selfishness of nature ; that much of the good 
done unto others, was done in the hope that these 
others would do something again. And, vi^e believe. 
It would be found by an able analyst of the human 
character, that this was the secret but substantial prin- 
ciple of many of the civilities and hospitalities of ordi- 
nary intercourse— that if there were no expectation 
either of a return in kind, or of a return in gratitude, 
or of a return in popularity, many of the sweetening 
and cementing virtues of a neighbourhood would be 
practically done away — all serving to prove, that a 
multitude of virtues, which, in effect, promoted the 
comfort and the interest of others, were tainted iu 
principle by a latent regard to one's own interest ; and 
that thus being the fellowship of those who did good, 
either as a return for the good done unto them, or who 
did good in hope of such a return, it might be, in fact^ 
what our Saviour characterizes it in the text-«^the fel- 
lowship of sinners. 

But if to do that whieh' is unjust, is still riiore dis- 



o2 v,HAJ.MFJr,s UlSCUfRivi:.'^. 

graceful than not to do that which is idnd, it would 
prove more strikingly than before, how deeply sin had 
tainted the moral constitution of our species — could it 
be shown, that the great practical restraint on the preva- 
lence of this more disgraceful thing in society, is the tie 
of that common selfishness which actuates and charac- 
terizes all its members. It were a curious but impor- 
tant question, were it capable of being resolved — if 
men did not feel it their interest to be honest, how 
much of the actual doings of honesty would still be 
kept up in the world? It is our own opinion of the 
nature of man, that it has its honourable feelings, and 
its instinctive principles of rectitude, and its constitu- 
tional love of truth and of integrity ; and that, on the 
basis of these, a certain portion of uprightness would 
remain amongst us, without the aid of any prudence, 
or any calculation whatever. All this we have fully 
conceded ; and have already attempted to demonstrate, 
that, in spite of it, the character of man is thoroughly 
pervaded by the very essence of sinfulness ; because, 
with all the native virtues which adorn it, there ad- 
heres to it that foulest of all spiritual deformities — mi- 
concern about God, and even antipathy to God. It 
has been argued against the orthodox doctrine of the 
imiversality of human corruption, that even without 
the sphere of the operation of the gospel, there do oc- 
cur so many engaging specimens of worth and benev- 
olence in society. The reply is, that this may be no 
deduction from the doctrine whatever, but be even an 
aggravation of it — should the very men who exemplify 
so much of what is amiable, carry in their hearts an in- 
difference to the will of that Being who thus hath 
formed, and thus hath embellished them. But it would 



OHALMER'S DI5C0UESES, 53 

be ci heavy deduction indeed, not from the doctrine, 
but from its hostile and opposing arguinent, could it 
be shown, that the vast nifijority of all equitable deal- 
ing amongst men, is performed, not on the principle of 
honour at all, but on the principle of selfishness — that 
this is the soil upon which the honesty of the world 
mainly flourishes, and is sustained ; that, were the 
connexion dissolved between justice to others and our 
own particular advantage, this would go ver}/ far to 
banish the observation of justice from the earth ; that, 
generally speaking, men are honest, not because they 
are lovers of God, and not even because they are lovers 
of virtue, but because thev are lovers of their ownselves 
—insomuch, that if it were possible to disjoin the good 
of self altogether from the habit of doirg what was 
fair, as well as from the habit of doing what was kind 
to the people around us, this would not merely isolate 
the children of men from each other, in respect of the 
obligations of beneficence, but it would arm them into 
an undisguised hostility against each other, in respect 
of their rights. The mere disinterested principle 
would set up a feeble barrier, indeed, against a deso- 
lating tide of selfishness, now set loose from the consid- 
eration of its own advantage. The genuine depravity 
of the human heart would burst forth and show itself 
in its true characters; and the world in which we live 
be transformed into a scene of unblushing fraud, of 
open and lawless depredation. 

And, perhaps, after all, the best way of arriving 
practically at the solution of this question would be^ 
not by a formal induction of particular cases, but by 
committing the matter to the gross and general expe- 



54 CHALMERS mSCOURSE:?. 

iience of those who are most conversant in the affabs 
of business* There is a sort of undefineable impression 
you all have upon this subject, on the justness of which 
however, we are disposed to lay a very considerable 
stress — an impression gathered out of tiie mass of the 
recollections of a whole life — an impression founded 
on what you may have observed in the history of jour 
own doings— a kind of tact that you have acquired as 
the fruit of your repeated intercourse with men, and of 
the manifold transactions that you have had with them, 
and of the number of times in which you have been 
personally implicated with the play of human passions, 
and human interests. It is our own conviction, that a 
well exercised merchant could cast a more intelligent 
glance at this question, than a well exercised meta- 
physician ; and therefore do we submit its decision to 
those of you who have hazarded most largely, and 
most frequently, on the faith of agents, and customers, 
and distant correspondents. We know the fact of a 
very secure and well warranted confidence in the 
honesty of others, being widely prevalent amongst you : 
and that, were it not for this, all the interchanges of 
trade would be suspended ; and that confidence is the 
very soul and life of commercial activity ; and it is 
delightful to think, how thus a man can suffer all the 
wealth which belongs to him to depar^from under his 
eye, and to traverse the mightiest oceans and continents 
of our world, and to pass into the custody of men 
whom he never saw. And it is a sublime homage, 
one should think, to the honourable and high-minded 
principles of our nature, that, under their guardianship 
the adverse hemispheres of the globe should be bound 
together in safe and profitable merchandise ; and that 



CHALMEirs DlBCOURSEfe. 



o:j 



thus one should sleep with a bosom undisturbed by 
jealousy, in Britain, who has all, and more than all his 
property treasured in the warehouses of India— and 
that, just because there he knows there is vigilance to 
defend it, and activity to dispose of it, and truth to 
account for it, and all those trusty virtues which enno- 
ble the character of man to shield it from injury, and 
send it back again in an increasing tide of opulence to 
his door. 

There is no question, then, as to the fact of a very 
extended practical honesty, between man and man, in 
their intercourse w ith each other. The only question 
is, as to the reason of the fact. Why is it, that he 
whom you have trusted acquits himself of his trust with 
such correctness and fidelity ? Whether is his mind, in 
so doing, most set upon your interest or upon his own ? 
Whether is it because he seeks your advantage in it, or 
because he finds in it his own advantage ? Tell us to 
which of the two concerns he is most tremblingly 
alive— 'to your property, or to his own character ? and 
whether, upon the last of these feelings, he may not be 
more forcibly impelled to equitable dealing than upon 
the first of them ? We well know, that there is room 
enough in his bosom for both ; but to determine how 
powerfully selfishness is blended with the punctualities 
and the integrities of business, let us ask those who can 
speak most so'undly and experimentally on the subject, 
what would be the result, if the element of selfishness 
were so detached from the operations of trade, that 
there was no such thing as a man suffering in his pros- 
perity, because he suffered in his good name ; that 
there wa^ no such thing as a desertion of custom and 



5|i CHALMERS DISC'OIJKSES 

employment coming upon the back of a blasted credit, 
and a tainted reputation ; in a word, if the only secu- 
rity we had of man was his principles, and that his 
interest flourished and augmented just as surely with- 
out his principles as with them ? Tell us, if the hold we 
have of a man's own personal advantage were thus 
broken down, in how far the virtues of the mercantile 
world would survive it ? Would not the world of trade 
sustain as violent a derangement on this mighty hold 
being cut asunder, as the world of nature would on 
the suspending of the law of gravitation ? Would not 
the whole system, in fact, fall to pieces, and be dissolv- 
ed ? Would not men, when thus released from the 
magical chain of their own interest, which bound them 
together into a fair and seeming compact of principle^ 
like dogs of rapine, let loose upon their prey, overleap 
the barrier which formerly restrained them ? Does not 
this prove, that selfishness, after all, is the grand prin- 
ciple on which the brotherhood of the human race is 
made to hang together ; and that he who can make the 
wrath of man to praise him, has also, upon the selfish- 
ness of man, caused a most beauteous order of wide 
and useful intercourse to be suspended ? 

But let us here stop to observe, that, while there is 
much in this contemplation to magnify the wisdom of 
the Supreme Contriver, there is also much in it to 
humble man, and to convict him of thedeceitfulness 
of that moral complacency with which he looks to his 
own character, and his own attainments. There is 
much in it to demonstrate, that his righteousnesses are 
as filthy rags ; and that the idolatry of self, however 
hidden in its operation, may be detected in almost every 



CHALMERS DISCOURSES. f^r 

one of them. God may Gombine the separate interests 
of every individual of the human race, and the strenu- 
ous prosecution of these interests by each of them, into 
a harmonious system of operation, for the good of one 
great and extended family. But if, on estimating the 
character of each individual member of that family, we 
shall find, that the main-spring of his actions is the ur- 
gency of a selfish inclination ; and that to this his very 
virtues are subordinate ; and that even the honesties 
which mark his conduct are chiefly, though, perhaps, 
insensibly due to the selfishness which actuates and 
occupies his whole heart ; — then, let the semblance be 
what it may, still the reality of the case accords with 
the most mortifying representations of the New Testa- 
ment. The moralities of nature are but the moralities 
of a day, and will cease to be applauded when this 
world, the only theatre of their applause, is burnt up. 
They are but the blossoms of that rank efflorescence 
which is nourished on the soil of human corruption, 
and can never bring forth fruit unto immortahty. The 
discerner of all secrets sees that they emanate from a 
principle which is at utter war with the charity that 
prepares for the enjoyments, and that glows in the 
bosoms of the celestial ; apd, therefore, though highly 
esteemed among men, they may be in his sight an 
abomination. 

Let us, if possible, make this still clearer to ybur 
apprehension, by descending more minutely into par- 
ticulars. There is not one member of the great mer- 
cantile family, with whom there does not obtain a re- 
ciprocal interest between himself and all those who 
compose the circle of his various correspondents. He 

8 



38 «;HAL.MERS DISCOt'RSE^. 

does tlieni good; but his eye is all the while open to 
the expectation of their doing him something again. 
They minister to him all the profits of his employment ; 
but not unless he minister to them of his service, and 
attention, and fidelity. Insomuch, that if his credit 
abandom him, his prosperity will also abandon him. 
If he forfeit the confidence of others, he will also for- 
feit their custom along with it. So that, in perfect 
consistency with interest being the reigning idol of his 
soul, he may still be, in every way, as sensitive of en- 
croachment upon his reputation, as he would be of en- 
croachment upon his property ; and be as vigilant, to 
the full, in guarding his name against the breath of 
calumny, or suspicion, as in guarding his estate against 
the inroads of a depredator. Now, this tie of recip- 
rocity, which binds him into fellowship and good faith 
with society at large, will sometimes, in the mere course 
of business, and its unlooked-for fluctuations, draw 
one or two individuals into a still more special inti- 
macy with himself. There may be a lucrative part- 
nersliip, in which it is the pressing necessity of each 
individual, that all of them, for a time at least, stick 
closely and steadily together. Or there may be a 
thriving interchange of commodities struck out, where 
it is the mutual interest of all who are concerned, that 
each take his assigned part and adhere to it. Or 
there may be a promising arrangement devised, which 
it needs concert and understanding to effectuate ; and, 
for which purpose, several may enter into a skilful ari4 
well ordered combination. We are neither saying 
that this is very general in the mercantile world, or 
that it is in the slightest degree unfair. But you must 
be sensible, that, amid the reelings and movements of 



CHALMER'S DiSCOljK3E3. 59 

the great trading society, the phenomenon sometimes 
offers itself of a groupe of individuals who have entered 
into some compact of mutual accommodation, and 
who, therefore, look as if they were isolated from the 
rest by the bond of some more strict and separate alli- 
ance. All we aim at, is to gather illustration to our 
principle, out of the way in which the members of this 
associated cluster conduct themselves to each other ; 
how such a cordiality may pass between them, as, one 
could suppose, to be the cordiality of genuine friend- 
ship ; how such an intercourse might be maintained 
among their families, as might look like the intercourse 
of unmingled affection ; how such an exuberance of 
mutual hospitality might be poured forth as to recal 
those poetic days when avarice was unkiiown and 
men lived in harmony together on the fruits of one 
common inheritance; and how nobly disdainful each 
member of the combination appeared to be of such 
little savings, as could be easily surrendered to the 
general good and adjustment of the whole concern. 
And all this, you will observe, so long as the concern 
prospered, and it was for the interest of each to abide 
by it; and the respective accounts current gladdened 
the heart of every individual, by the exhibition of an 
abundant share of the common benefit to himself. 
But then, every such system of operations comes to 
an end. And what we ask is, if it be at all an unlikely 
evolution of our nature, that the selfishness which lav 
in wrapt concealment, during the progress of these 
transactions, should now come forward and put out to 
view its cloven foot, when they draw to their termina- 
tion ? And as the tie of reciprocity gets looser, is it 
not a very possible thing, that the murmurs of some- 



(jO CHALMER'S DISCOURSES. 

thing like iinlair or unhandsome conduct should get 
Jouder ? And that a fellowship, hitherto carried for- 
ward in smiles, should break up In reproaches ? And 
that the whole character of this fellowship should show 
itself more unequivocally as it comes nearer to its 
close ? And that some of its members, as they are 
becoming disengaged from the bond of mutual interest, 
should also become disengaged from the bond of those 
mutual delicacies and proprieties, and even^honesties, 
which had heretofore marked the whole of their inter- 
course ? — Insomuch, that a matter in which all the 
parties looked so fair, and magnanimous, andfliberal, 
might at length degenerate into a contest of keen 
appropriation, a scramble of downright and undisguis- 
ed selfishness? 

But though this may happen sometimes, we are fai* 
from saying that it will happen generally. It could 
not, in fact, without such an exposure of character, 
as might not merely bring a man down in the estima- 
tion of those from whom he is now withdrawing him- 
self, but also in the estimation of that general public 
with whom he is still linked ; and on whose opinion 
of him there still rests the dependence of a strong per- 
sonal interest. To estimate precisely the whole influence 
of this consideration, or the degree in which honesty of 
character is resolvable into selfishness of character, it 
would be necessary to suppose, that the tie of reciprocity 
was dissolved, not merely between the individual and 
,those with whom he had been more particularly and 
more intimately associated — ^but that the tie of reci- 
procity was dissolved between the individual and the 
whole of his former acquaintanceship in business. 



CHALMERS DISCOURSES. ^31 

Now, the situation vvhicii comes nearest to this, is that 
of a man on the eve of bankruptcy, and with no sure 
hope of so retrieving his circumstances as again to 
emerge into credit, and be restored to some employ- 
ment of gain or of confidence, if he have either 
honourable or religious feelings, then charactei^, as con- 
nected with principle may still, in his eyes, be some- 
thing ; but character, as connected with prudence, or 
the calculations of interest, may now be nothing. In 
the dark hour of the desperation of his soul, he may 
feel, in fact, that he has nothing to lose: and let us 
now see how he will conduct himself, \vhen thus re- 
leased from that check of reputation which formerly 
held him. In these circumstances, if you have ever 
seen the man abandon himself to utter regardlessness 
of all the honesties which at one time adorned him, 
and doing such disgraceful things as he would have 
spurned at the very suggestion of, in the days of his 
prosperity; and, forgetful of his former name, practi- 
sing all possible shifts of duplicity to prolong the credit 
of a tottering establishment; and to keep himself 
afloat for a few months of torture and resdessness, 
weaving such a web of entanglement around his many 
friends and companions, as shall most surely implicate 
some of them in his fall; and, as the crisis approaches, 
plying his petty wiles how^ to survive the coming ruin, 
and to gather up of its fragments to his family. O ! 
how much is there here to deplore; and who can be 
so ungenerous as to stalk in unrelenting triumph over 
the helplessness of so sad an overthrow ! But if ever 
such an exhibition meet your eye, while we ask you 
not to withhold your pity from the unfortunate, we ask 
you also to read in it a lesson of worthless and sunken 



g2 CHALMERS DISCOURSES, i 

humanity ; how even its very virtues are tinctured with 
corruption ; and that the honour, and the truth, and 
the equity, with which man proudly thinks his nature 
to be embellished, are often reared on the basis of sel- 
fishness, and lie prostrate in the dust when that basis is 
cut awav. 

But other instances may be quoted, which go still 
more satisfactorily to prove the very extended influ- 
ence of selfishness on the moral judgments of our 
species ; and how readily the estimate, which a man 
forms on the question of right and wrong, accommo- 
dates itself to his own interest. There is a strong 
general reciprocity of advantage between the govern- 
tnent of a country and all its inhabitants. The one 
party, in this relation, renders a revenue for the ex- 
penses of the state. The other party renders back 
again protection from injustice and violence. Were 
the means furnished by the former withheld, the bene- 
fit conferred by the latter would cease to be adminis- 
tered. So that, with the government, and the public 
at large, nothing can be more strict, and more indis- 
pensable, than the tie of reciprocity that is between 
them. But this is not felt, and therefore not acted upon 
by the separate individuals who compose that public* 
The reciprocity does not come home with a sufficient- 
ly pointed and personal application to each of them. 
Every man may calculate, that though he, on the 
strength of some dexterous evasions, were to keep 
back of the tribute that is due by him, the mischief 
that w^ould recoil upon himself is divided with the 
rest of his countrymen ; and the portion of it which 
comes to his door would be so very small, as to be al- 



CHALMERS DISCOURSES. 63 

together insensible. To all feeling he will just be as 
effectually sheltered, by the power and the justice of 
his country, whether he pay his taxes in full, or, under 
the guise of some skilful concealment, pay them but 
partially; and therefore, to every practical effect, the 
tie of reciprocity, between him and his sovereign, is 
in a great measure dissolved. Now, what is the act- 
ual adjustment of the moral sense, and moral conduct, 
of the population, to this state of matters ? It is quite 
palpable. Subterfuges, which, in private business, 
would be held to be disgraceful, are not held to be so 
disgraceful in this department of a man's personal 
transactions. The cry of indignation, which would 
be lifted up against the falsehood or dishonesty of a 
man's dealings in his own neighbourhood, is mitigated 
or unheard, though, in his dealings with the state, 
there should be the very same relaxation of principle. 
On this subject, there is a connivance of popular feel- 
ing, which, if extended to the whole of human traffic, 
would banish all its securities from the world. Giving; 
reason to believe, that much of the good done among 
men, is done on the expectation of a good that will 
be rendered back again ; and that many of the vir- 
tues, by which the fellowship of human beings is re- 
gulated and sustained, still leave the imputation unre- 
deemed, of its being a fellowship of sinners ; and that 
both the practice of morality, and the demand fpr it^ 
are measured by the operation of a self-love, which, 
so far from signalizing any man, or preparing him for 
eternity, \ie tiolds in common with the fiercest and 
most degenerate of his species ; and that, apart froni 
the consideration of his own interest, simplicity and 
godly sincerity are, to a great degree, unknown; in- 



(54- CHALMEIVS DISCOURSES. 

somuch, that though God has interposed with a law, of 
giving unto all their dues, and tribute to whom tribute 
is due — we may venture an affirmation of the vast 
majority of this tribute, that it is rendered for wrath's 
sake, and not for conscience' sake. Of so little effect 
is unsupported and solitary conscience to stem the tide 
of selfishness. And it is chiefly when honesty and 
truth go overbearingly along with this tide, that the 
voice of man is lifted up to acknowledge them, and 
his heart becomes feelingly alive to a sense of their 
obligations. 

And let us here just ask, in what relation of crimin- 
ality does he who uses a contraband article stand to 
him who deals in it? In precisely the same relation 
that a receiver of stolen goods stands to a thief or a 
depredator. There may be some who revolt at the 
idea of being so classified. But, if the habit we have 
just denounced can be fastened on men of rank and 
seemly reputation, let us just humble ourselves into the 
admission of how little the righteous practice of the 
world has the foundation of righteous principle to sus- 
tain it; how feeble are the securities of rectitude, had 
it nothing to uphold it but its own native charms, and 
native obligations ; how society is held together, only 
because the grace of God can turn to account the 
worthless propensities of the individuals who com- 
pose it ; and how, if the virtues of fidelity, and truth, 
and justice, had not the prop of selfishness to rest upon, 
they would, with the exception of a few scattered rem- 
nants, take their departure from the world, and leave 
it a prey to the anarchy of human passions — to the 
wild misrule of all those depravities which agitate and 
deform our ruined nature. 



CJJALM£H'3 DISCOUKSES. g.^. 

The very sartie exhibition of our nature may be wit- 
nessed in almost every parish of our sister kingdom, 
where the people render a revenue to the minister of 
religion, and the minister renders back again a return, 
it is true — but not such a return, as, in the estimation 
of gross and ordinary selfishness, is at all deemed an 
equivalent for the sacrifice which has been made. In 
this instance, too, that law of reciprocity which reigns 
throughout the common transactions of merchandise, 
is altogether suspended ; and the consequence is, that 
the law of right is trampled into ashes. A tide of pub- 
lic odium runs against the men who are outraged of 
their property, and a smile of general connivance re- 
wards the successful dexterity of the men who invade 
it. That portion of the annual produce of our soil, 
which, on a foundation of legitimacy as firm as the 
property of the soil itself, is allotted to a set of national 
functionaries— and which, but for them, would all 
have gone, in the shape of increased revenue, to the 
indolent proprietor, is altogether thrown loose from the 
guardianship of that great principle of reciprocity, on 
which we strongly suspect that the honesties of this 
world are mainly supported. The national clergy of 
England may be considered as standing out of the pale 
of this guardianship ; and the consequence is, that what 
is most rightfully and most sacredly theirs, is abandon- 
ed to the gambol of many thousand depredators ; and, 
in addition to a load of most mimerited obloquy, have 
they had to sustain ail the heartburnings of known and 
felt injustice; and that intercourse between the teach- 
ers and the taught, which ought surely to be an inter- 
course of peace, and friendship, and righteousness, is 
turned into a contest between the natural avarice of 



^56 CHALMtlK'S DlSCOLKSEs. 

the one party, and the natural resentments of the other- 
It is not that we wish our sister church were swept 
away, for we honestly think, that the overthrow of that 
establishment would be a severe blow to the Chris- 
tianity of our land. It is not that we envy that great 
hierarchy the splendour of her endowments — for better 
a dinner of herbs, when surrounded by the love of par- 
ishioners, than a preferment of stalled dignity, and 
strife therewith. It is not either that we look upon 
her ministers as having at all disgraced themselves by 
their rapacity ; for look to the amount of the encroach- 
ments that are made upon them, and you will see that 
they have carried their privileges with the most exem- 
plary forbearance and moderation. But, from these 
very encroachments do we infer how lawless a human 
being will become, when emancipated from the bond 
of his own interest ; how much such a state of things 
must multiply the temptations to injustice over the face 
of the country ; and how desirable, therefore, that it 
were put an end to—not by the abolition of that vene- 
rable church, but by a fair and hberal commutation 
of the revenues which support her — not by bringing 
any blight on the property of her ecclesiastics, but by 
the removal of a most devouring blight from the worth 
of her population — that every provocative to injustice 
may be done away, and the frailty of human principle 
be no longer left to such a ruinous and such a wither- 
ing exposure. 

This instance we would not have mentioned, but for 
the sake of adding another experimental proof to the 
lesson of our text ; and we now hasten onward to the 
lesson itself with a few of its applications 



to 



CHALMER'S DISCOURSES, ^^J 

We trust you are convinced, from what has been 
said that much of the actual honesty of the world is 
due to the selfishness of the world. And then you will 
surely admit, that, in as far as this is the actuating 
principle, honesty descends from its place as a rewar- 
dable, or even as an amiable virtue, and sinks down 
into the character of a mere prudential virtue — ^which^ 
so far from conferring any moral exaltation on him by 
whom it is exemplified, emanates out of a propensity 
that seems inseparable from the constitution of every 
sentient being — and by which man is, in one pointy 
assimilated either to the most worthless of his own 
species, or to those inferior animals among whom worth 
is unattainable. 

And let it not deafen the humbling impression of 
this argument, that you are not distinctly conscious of 
the operation of selfishness, as presiding at every step 
over the honesty of your daily and familiar transactions ; 
and that the only inward checks against injustice, of 
which you are sensible, are the aversion of a generous 
indignancy towards it, and the positive discomfort you 
would incur by the reproaches of your own conscience. 
Selfishness, in fact, may have originated and alimented 
the whole of this virtue that belongs to you, and yet the 
mind incur the same discomfort by the violation of it^ 
that it would do by the violation of any other of its 
estabhshed habits. And as to the generous indignancy 
of your feelings against all that is fraudulently and dis= 
gracefully wrong, let us never forget, that this may be 
^he nurtured fruit of that common selfishness which 
links human beings with each other into a relationship 
of mutual dependaxice. This may be seen, in all its 



perfectioo, among the leagued and sworn banditti of 
the highway ; who, while execrated by society at large 
for the compact of iniquity into which they have enter- 
ed, can maintain the most heroic fidelity to the virtues 
of their own brotherhood— and be, in every way, as^ 
lofty and as chivalric with their points of honour, as 
we are with ours ; and elevate as indignant a voice 
against the worthlessness of him who could betray the 
secret of their association, or break up any of the secu- 
rities by which it wa-s held together. And, in like ' 
manner, mav we be the members of a wider combina- 
tion, yet brought together by the tie of reciprocal 
interest ; and all the virtues essential to the existence, 
or to the good of such a combination, may come to be 
idolized amongst us ; and the breath of human applause 
may fan them into a lustre of splendid estimation ; and 
yet the good man of society on earth be, in common 
with all his fellows, an utter outcast from the society of 
heaven— with his heart altogether bereft of that allegi- 
ance to God which forms the reigning principle of his 
unfallen creation — and in a state of entire destitution 
either as to that love of the Supreme Being, or as to 
that disinterested love of those around us, which form 
the graces and the virtues of eternitv. 

We have not affirmed that there is no such thing as 
a native and disinterested principle of honour among 
nien. But we have affirmed, on a former occasion, 
that n sense of honour may be in the heart, and the 
sense of God be utterly away from it. And we affirm, 
now, that much of the honest practice of the world is 
not due to honesty of principle at all, but takes its 
ongin from a baser ingredient of our constitution 



CHALMERS DISCOURSES. ^ij 

altogether. How wide is the operation of selfishness 
on the one hand, and how limited is the operation of 
abstract principle on the other, it were difficult to de» 
terrnine ; and such a labyrinth to man is his own hearty 
that he may be utterly unable, from his own conscious- 
ness, to answer this question. But amid all the diffi- 
culties of such an analysis to himself, we ask him to 
think of another who is unseen by us, but uho is 
represented to us as seeing all things. We know not 
in what characters this heavenly witness can be more 
impressively set forth, than as pondering the heart, as 
weighing the secrets of the heart, as fastening an atten- 
tive and a judging eye on all the movements of it, as 
treasuring up the whole of man's outward and inward 
history in a book of remembrance ; and as keeping it 
in reserve for that day when, it is said, that the secrets 
of all hearts shall be laid open ; and God shall bring 
out every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether 
it be evil. Your consciousness may not distinctly in- 
form you, in how far the iutegrity of your habits is due 
to the latent operation of selfishness, or to the more 
direct and obvious operation of honour. But your 
consciousness may, perhaps, inform you distinctly 
enough, how little a share the will of God has in the 
w-ay of influence on any of your doings. Your own 
sense g^nd memory of what passes within you may 
charge you with the troth of this monstrous indictment 
•■^—that you live without God in the world ; that how- 
ever you may be signalized among your fellows, by 
that worth of character which is held in highest value 
and demand amongst the individuals of a mercantile 
society, it is at least without the influence of a godly 
principle that you have reached the maturity of an 



70 CHALMEK S DISCOURSES. 

established reputation ; that either the proud emotions 
of rectitude which glow within your bosom are totally 
untinctured by a feeling of homage to the Deity — or 
that, without any such emotions. Self is the divinity 
you have all along worshipped, and your very virtues 
are so many offerings of reverence at her shrine. If 
such be, in fact, the nakedness of your spiritual condi- 
tion, is it not high time, we ask, that you awaken out 
of this delusion, and shake the lying spirit of deep and 
heavy slumber away from you ? Is it not high time, 
when eternity is so fast coming on, that you examine 
your accounts with God, and seek for a settlement 
with that Being who will so soon meet your disembodied 
spirits with the question of — what have you done unto 
me ? And if all the virtues which adorn you are but 
the subserviencies of time, and of its accommodations 
— if either done altosjether unto yourselves, or done 
without the recognition of God on the spontaneous 
instigation of your own feelings — is it not high time 
that you lean no longer to the securities on which you 
have rested, and that you seek for acceptance with 
your Maker on a more firm and unalterable founda- 
tion ? 

This, then, is the terminating object of all the expe- 
rience that we have tried to set before you We want 
it to be a schoolmaster to bring you unto Christ. We 
want you to open your eyes to the accordancy which 
obtains between the theology of the New Testament, 
and the actual state and history of man. Above all, 
we want you to turn your eyes inwardly upon your- 
selves, and there to behold a character without one 
trace or lineament of godliness — there to behold a heart, 



CHALMEKS DISCOUKbES. f £ 

set Upon totally other things than those which constitute 
the portion and the reward of eternity — there to be- 
hold every principle of action resolvable into the idol- 
atry of self, or, at least, into something independent of 
the authority of God — there to behold how worthless 
in their substance are those virtues which look so im- 
posing in their semblance and their display, and draw 
around them here a popularhyand an applause which 
will all be dissipated into nothing, when hereafter they 
are brought up for examination to the judgment-seat. 
We want you, when the revelation of the gospel char- 
ges you with the totality and magnitude of your cor- 
ruption, that you acquiesce in that charge ; and that 
you may perceive the trurness of it, under the disguise 
of all those hollow and unsubstantial accomplishments 
with which nature may deck her own fallen and de- 
generate children. It is easy to be amused, and inter- 
ested, and intellectually regaled, by an analysis of the 
human character, and a survey of human society. 
But it is not so easy to reach the individual conscience 
with the lesson — we are undcnie. It is not so easy to 
strike the alarm into your hearts of the present guilty 
and the future damnation. It is not so easy to send 
the pointed arrow of conviction into your bosoms^ 
where it may keep by you and pursue you like an ar- 
row sticking fast ; or so to humble you into the conclu- 
sion, that in the sight of God, you are an accursed 
thing, as that you may seek unto him who became a 
curse for you, and as that the preaching of his Cross 
might cease to be fooUshness, 

Be assured, then, if you keep by the ground of being 
justified by your present works, you will perish: and 



j^2 CHALMERS DISCOUKSEb, 

though we may not have succeeded in convincing you 
of their worthlessness, be assured, that a day is coming 
when such a flaw of deceitfukiess, in the principle of 
them all, shall be laid open, as will demonstrate the 
equity of your entire and everlasting condemnation. 
To avert the fearfulness of thai day is the message of the 
great atonement sounded in your ears — and the blood 
of Christ, cleansing from all sin, is offered to your ac- 
ceptance ; and if you turn away from it, you add to 
the guilt of a broken law the insult of a neglected gos- 
pel. But if you take the pardon of the gospel on the 
footing of the gospel, then, such is the efficacy of this 
o^reat expedient, that it will reach an application of 
mercy farther than the eye of your own conscience 
ever reached ; that it will redeem you from the guilt 
even of your most secret and unsuspected iniquities ; 
and thoroughly wash you from a taint of sinfulness, 
more inveterate than, in the blindness of nature, you 
ever thought of, or ever conceived to belong to you. 

But when a man becomes a believer, there are two 
great events which take place at this great turning 
point in his history. One of them takes place in heaven 
—even the expunging of his name from the book of 
condemnation. Another of them takes place on earth 
—even the application of such a sanctifying influence 
to his person, that all old things are done away with 
him, and all things become new with him. He is 
made the workmanship of God in Christ Jesus our 
Lord. He is not merely forgiven the sin of every one 
evil work of which he had aforetime been guilty, but 
he is created anew unto the corresponding good work. 
And, therefore, if a Christian, will his honesty be 



CHALMEH'S DISCOURSES. 715 

purified from that taint of selfishness by which the gen- 
eral honesty of this world is so deeply and extensively 
pervaded. He will not do this good thing, that any 
good thing may be done unto him again. He will do 
it on a simple regard to its own native and independent 
rectitude. He will do it because it is honourable, and 
because God wills him so to adorn the doctrine of his 
Saviour. All his fair dealing, and all his friendship, 
will be fair dealing and friendship without interest. 
The principle that is in him will stand in no need of aid 
from any such auxiliary — but strong in its own unbor- 
rowed resources, will it impress a legible stamp of dig- 
nity and uprightness on the whole variety of his trans- 
actions in the world. All men find it their advantage, 
by the integrity of their dealings, to prolong the exist- 
ence of some gainful fellowship into which they may 
have entered. But with him, the same unsullied 
integrity which kept this fellowship together, and sus- 
tained the progress of it, will abide with him through 
its last transactions, and dignify its full and final ter- 
mination. Most men find, that, without the reverber- 
ation of any mischief on their own heads, they could 
reduce beneath the point of absolute justice, the charges 
of taxation. But he has a conscience both towards 
God, and towards man, which will not let him ; and 
there is a rigid truth in all his returns, a pointed and 
precise accuracy in all his payments. When hemmed 
in with circumstances of 4ifficulty, and evidently totter- 
ing to his fall, the demand of nature is, that he should ply 
his every artifice to secrete a provision for his family. 
But a Christian mind is incapable of artifice; and the 
voice of conscience within him will ever be louder than 
the voice of ne<:essity ; and he will be open as day 

10 



74 ri-iALMER'S j)j><:r»rR8t:s. 

with his creditors nor put forth his hand to that which 
is rightfully theirs, any more than he would put forth 
his hand to the perpetration of a sacrilege ; and though 
released altogether from that tie of interest which binds 
a man to equity with his fellows, yet the tie of princi- 
ple will remain with him in all its strength. Nor will 
it ever be found that he, for the sake of subsistence, 
will enter into fraud, seeing that, asoneof the children 
of light, he would not, to gain the whole world, lose 
his own soul. 



DISCO UH8E IV* 

THE GUILT OF DISHONESTY NOT TO BE ESTIMATED BY TilE 

GAIN OF IT. 



' He that is I'aithful in that which is least, is faithiui also jii iiiuch j and 
he that is unjust in the least, is unjust also in much.—LuKE xvi. 10, 

It is the fine poetical conception of a late poetical 
countryman, whose fancy too often grovelled, among 
the despicable of human character — -but who, at the 
same time, was capable of exhibiting, either in pleas- 
ing or in proud array, both the tender and the noble 
of human character— when he says of the man who 
carried a native unborrowed self-sustained rectitude in 
his bosom, that " his eye, even turned on empty space, 
beamed keen with honour." It was afiirmed, in the 
last discourse, that much of the honourable practice 
of the world rested on the substratum of selfishness ; 
that society was held together in the exercise of its 
relative virtues, mainly, by the tie of reciprocal ad- 
vantage ; that a man's own interest bound him to all 
those average equities which obtained in the neigh- 
bourhood around him ; and in which, if he proved 
himself to be glaringly deficient, he would be aban- 
doned by the respect, and the confidence, and the 
good will, of the people with whom he had to do. It 
is a melancholy thought, how little the semblance of 
virtue upon earth betokens the real and substantial 
presence of vh'tuous principle aiooiig men. But. on 



70 CHALMERS DiSCOUKSES 

the other hand, though it be a rare, there cannot be g 
more dignified altitude of the soul, than when of itself 
it kindles with a sense of justice, and the holy flame is 
fed, as it were, by its own energies ; than when man 
moves onwards in an unchanging ^course of moral 
magnanimity, and disdains the aid of those inferior 
principles by which gross and sordid humanity is kepi 
from all the grosser violations ; than when he rejoices 
in truth as his kindred and congenial element ;— so, 
that tliough unpeopled of all its terrestrial accompani- 
ments ; though he saw no interest whatever to be as- 
sociated with its fulfilment ; though without one pros- 
pect either of fame or of emolument before him, would 
his eye, even when turned on emptiness itself, still re- 
tain the living lustre that had been lighted up ill it, 
by a feeling of inward and independent reverence. 

It has already been observed, and that fully, and 
frequently enough, that a great part of the homage 
which is rendered to integrity in the world, is due to 
the operation of selfishness. And this substantially is 
the reason, why the principle of the text has so very 
slender a hold upon the human conscience. Man is 
ever prone to estimate the enormity of injustice, by 
the degree in which he suffers from it. He brings this 
moral question to the standard of his own interest- 
A mtister will bear with all the lesser liberties of his 
servants, so long as he feels them to be harmless ; and 
it is not till he is awakened to the apprehension of 
personal injury from the amount or frequency of the 
embezzlements, that his moral indignation is at all 
sensiblv avv^akened. And thus it is, that the maxim of 
miv great teacher of righteousness seems to be very 



CHALMERS DISCOUKBES. ' U 

imicii unfelt, or forgotten, in society. Unfaithfulness 
in that which is little, and unfaithfulness in that which 
is much, are very far from being regarded, as they 
were by him under the same aspect of criminality. 
If there be no great hurt, it is felt that there is no great 
harm. The innocence of a dishonest freedom in res- 
pect of morality, is rated by its insignificance in respect 
of matter. The margin which separates the right frona 
the wrong is remorselessly trodden under foot, so long 
as each makes only a minute and gentle encroachment 
beyond the landmark of his neighbour's territory. 
On this subject there is a loose and popular esiimate^ 
which is not at one with the deliverance of the INew 
Testament ; a habit of petty invasion on the side of 
aggressors, which is scarcely felt by them to be at all 
iniquitous — and even oo the part of those who are thus 
made free with there is a habit of loose and careless 
toleration. There is, in fact, a negligence or a dor- 
mancy of principle among men, which causes this sort 
of injustice to be easily practised on the one side, and 
as easily put up with on the other ; and, in a general 
slackness of observation, is this virtue, in its strictness 
and in its delicacy, completely overbornCo 

- it is the taint of selfishness, then, ivhich has so 
marred and corrupted the moral sensibility of our 
world; and the man, if such a man can be, whose 
'^ eye, even turned on empty space, beams keen with 
honour ;" and whose homage, therefore, to the virtue 
of justice, is altogether freed from the mixture of un- 
worthy and interested feelings, will long to render to 
her, in every instance, a faultless and a completed oiier- 
ine. ¥/hatever his forbearance to others, he could 



IQ L^HALMER'S DlSCOUKSEb. 

not sutfer the slightest blot of corruption upon any 
doings of his own. He cannot be satisfied vvidi any 
thing short of the very last jot and tittle of the require- 
ments of equity being fulfilled. He not merely shares 
in the revolt of the general world against such outra- 
geous departures from the rule of right, as would carry 
in their train the ruip of acquaintances or the distress 
of families. Such is the delicacy of the principle with- 
in him, that he could not have peace under the con- 
sciousness even of the minutest and least discoverable 
violation. He looks fully and fearlessly at the whole 
58CCount which jqstice has against him ; and he cannot 
i-est, so long as there is a single article unmet, or a sin- 
gle demand unsatisfied. If, in any transaction of his 
there was so much as a farthing of secret and injurious 
reservation on his side, this would be to him like an 
accursed thing, which marred the character of the 
whole proceeding, and spread over it such an aspect 
of evil, as to offend and to disturb him. He could not 
bear the whisperings of his own heart, if it told him, 
that, in so much as by one iota of defect, he had balan- 
ced the matter unfairly betvveen himself and tlie un- 
conscious individual with whom he deals. It would 
lie a burden upon his mind to hurt and to make him 
unhappy, till the opportunity of explanation had come 
round, and he had obtained ease to his conscience, by 
acquitting himself to the full of all his obligations. It is 
jusdce in the uprightness of her atdtude ; It is justice in 
the onwardness of her path ; it is justice disdaining 
every advantage that would tempt her, by ever so litde 
to the right or to the left ; it is justice spurning the 
litdeness of each paltry enticement away from her, and 
nraintainin^ herself without deviation, in a track so 



QHALMEIVS DISCOURSES. f y 

purely rectilineal, that even the most jealous and mi- 
croscopic eye could not find in it the slightest aberration : 
this is the justice set forth by our great moral Teacher 
in the passage now submitted to you ; and by which 
we are told, that this virtue refuses fellowship with every 
degree of iniquity that is perceptible ; and that, were 
the very least act of unfaithfulness admitted, she would 
feel as if in her sanctity she had been violated, as if in 
her character she had sustained an overthrow. 

In the further prosecution of this discourse, let us 
first attempt to elucidate the principle of our text, and 
then urge it onward to its practical consequences — 
both as it respects our general relation to God, and as 
it respects the particular lesson of faithfulness that may 
be educed from it. 

I. The great principle of the text is, that he who 
has sinned, though to a small amount in respect of the 
iruit of his transgression — provided he has done so, by 
passing over a forbidden limit which was dictinctly 
known to him, has, in the act of doing so, incurred a 
full condemnation in respect o^ the principle of his 
transgression. In one word, that the gain of it may 
be small, while the guilt of it may be great; that the 
latter ought not to be measured by the former ; but 
that he who is unfaithful in the least, shall be dealt 
with, in respect of the offence he has given to God, 
in the same way as if he had been unfaithful in much. 

The first reason which we would assign in vindica- 
tion of this is, that by a small act of injustice, the line 
which separates the right from the wrong, is just as 



so CMALMER'S DISCOURSEij: 

effectually broken over as by a great act of injustictv 
There is a tendency in gross and corporeal man to 
rate the criminality of injustice by the amount of its 
appropriations—to reduce it to acomputaticm of weight 
and of measure — to count the man who has gained 
a double sum by his dishonesty, to be doubly more 
dishonest than his neighbour —to make it an affair 
of product rather than of principle ; and thus to weigh 
the tnprality of a character in the same arithmetical bal- 
ance with number or with magnitude. Now, this is not 
the rule of calculation on which our Saviour has pro- 
ceeded in the text. He speaks to the man who is only 
half an inch within the limit of forbidden ground, in the 
very same terms by which he addresses the man who 
has made the furthest and the largest incursions upon 
it. It is trW, that he is only a little way upon the 
wrong side of the line of di^marcation; But why is he 
upon it at all? It was in the act of crossing that line, 
and not in the act of going onwards after hd iiad 
crossed it — it was then that the contest between right 
and wrong was entered upon, and then it w as decided. 
That was the instant of time at which principle struck 
her surrender. The great pull which the man bad to 
make, was in the act of overleaping the fence of sepa- 
ration ; and after that was done, justice had no other 
barrier by vi^hich to obstruct his progress over the whole 
extent of the field which she had interdicted. There 
might be barriers of a different description. There 
might be siill a revolting of humanity against the suf-> 
ferings that would be inflicted by an act of larger 
fraud or depredation. There might be a dread of ex- 
posure, if the dishonesty should so swell, in point of 
amount^ as to become more noticeable. There might, 



CHALMERS DISCOURSES. gl 

after the absolute limit between justice and injustice is 
broken, be another limit against the extending of a 
man's encroachments, in a terror of discovery, or in a 
sense of interest, or even in the relentings of a kindly 
or a compunctious feeling tovi^ards him who is the vic- 
tim of injustice. But this is not the limit with which 
the question of a man's truth, or a man's honesty, has 
to do. These have already been given up. He may 
only be a little way within the margin of the unlawful 
territory, but still he is upon it ; and the God who finds 
him there will reckon with him, and deal with him ac- 
cordingly. Other principles, and other considerations, 
may restrain his progress to the very heart of the ter- 
ritory, but justice is not one of them. This he delib- 
erately flung away from him, at that moment when he 
passed the line of circumvallation ; and, though in the 
neighbourhood of that line, he may hover all his days 
at the petty work of picking and purloining such frag- 
ments as he meets with, though he may never venture 
himself to a place of more daring or distinguished 
atrocity, God sees of him^ that, in respect of the prin- 
ciple of justice, at least, there is an utter unhingement. 
And thus it is, that the Saviour, who knew what was 
in man, and who, therefore, knew all the springs of 
that moral machinery by which he is actuated, pro- 
nounces of him who was unfaithful in the least, that 
he was unfaithful also in much. 

After the transition is accomplished, the progress 

will follow of course, just as opportunity invites, and 

just as circumstances make it safe and practicable. 

For it is not with justice as it is with generosity, and 

some of the other virtues. There is not the same 

11 



g2 CHALMERS BlgCQURSES. 

graduation in the former as there is in the latter. The 
man who, other circumstances being equal, gives away 
a double sum in charity, may, with more propriety, be 
reckoned doubly more generous than his neighbour; 
than the man who, with the same equality of circum- 
stances, only ventures on half the extent of fraudulen- 
cy, can be reckoned only one half as unjust as his 
neighbour. Each has broken a clear line of demar- 
cation. Each has transgressed a distinct and visible 
limit which he^knevi^ to be forbidden. Each has 
knowingly forced a passage beyond his neighbour's 
landmark — and that is the place where justice has laid 
the main force of her interdict. As it respects the 
materiel of injustice, the question revolves itself into 
a mere computation of quantity. x4ls it respects the 
morale of injustice, the computation is upon other prin- 
ciples. It is upon the latter that our Saviour pronoun- 
ces himself And he gives us to understand, that a 
very humble degree of the former may indicate the 
latter in all its atrocity. He stands on the breach 
between the lawful and the unlawful ; and he tells us, 
that the man who enters by a single footstep on the 
forbidden ground, immediately gathers upon his per- 
son the full hue and character of guiltiness. He 
admits no extenuation of the lesser acts of dishon- 
esty. He does not make right pass into wrong, by 
a gradual melting of the one into the other. He does 
not thus obliterate the distinctions of morahtv. There 
is no shading off at the margin of guilt, but a clear 
and vigorous delineation. It is not by a gentle transi- 
tion that a man steps over from honesty to dishonesty. 
There is between them a wall rising up unto heaven ; 
and the high authority of heaven must be stormed ere 



CII ALM ER'S PI SCOL RSKS. 



.83 



one inch of entrance can be made into the region of 
iniquity. The morality of the Saviour never leads 
him to gloss over the beginnings of crime. His object 
ever is, as in the text before us, to fortify the hmit, to 
cast a rampart of exclusion around the whole territory 
of guilt, and to rear it before the eye of man in such 
characters of strength and sacredness, as should make 
them feel that it is impregnable* 

The second reason, why he who is unfaithful in the 
least has incurred the condemnation of him who is un- 
faithful in much, is, that the littleness of the gain, so 
far from giving a littleness to the guilt, is in fact a cir- 
cumstance of aggravation. There is just this differ- 
ence. He who has committed injustice for the sake of 
a less advantage, has done it on the impulse of a less 
temptation. He has parted with his honesty at an in- 
ferior pirice ; and this circumstance may go so to equal,- 
ise the estimate, as to bring it very much to one with 
the deliverance, in the text, of our great Teacher of 
righteousness. The limitation between good and evil 
stood as distinctlv before the notice of the small as of 
the great depredator ; and he has just made as direct a 
contravention to the first reason, when he passed over 
upon the wrong side of it. And he may have made 
little of gain by the enterprise, but this does not allay 
the guilt of it. Nay, by the second reason, this may 
serve to aggravate the wrath of the Divinity against 
him. It proves how small the price is which he sets 
upon his eternity, and how cheaply he can bargain the 
favour of God away from him, and hovv low he rates 
the good of an inheritance with him, and for what a 
trifle he can dispose of all interest in his kingdom and 



g4 CHALMER'S DISCOURSES. 

in his promises. The very circumstance which gives 
to his character a milder transgression in the eyes oi 
the world, makes it more odious in the judgment of 
the sanctuary. The more paltry it is in respect of 
profit, the more profane it may be in respect of prin- 
ciple. It likens him the more to profane Esau, who 
sold his birthright for a mess of pottage. And thus it 
is, indeed, most woful to think of such a senseless and 
alienated world ; and how heedlessly the men of it are 
posting their infatuated way to destruction ; and how, 
for as little gain as might serve them a day, they are 
contracting as much guilt as will ruin them for ever ; 
and are profoundly asleep in the midst of such designs 
and such doings, as will form the valid materials of 
their entire and everlasting condemnation. 

It is with argument such as this that w^e would try 
to strike conviction among a very numerous class of 
offenders in society — those who, in the various depart- 
ments of trust, or service, or agency, are ever practis- 
ing, in littles, at the work of secret appropriation — 
those whose hands are in a state of constant defilement, 
by the putting of them forth to that which they ought 
to touch not, and taste not, and handle not— those who 
silently number such pilferments as can pass unnoticed 
among the perquisites of their office ; and who, by an 
excess in their charges, just so slight as to escape de- 
tection—or by a habit of purloining, just so restrained 
as to elude discovery, have both a conscience very 
much at ease in their own bosoms, and a credit very 
fair, and very entire, among their acquaintances around 
them. They grossly count upon the smallness of their 
transgression. But they are just going in a small way 



CHALMER S DISCOURSES. S5 

to hell. They would recoil with violent dislike from 
the act of a midnight depredator. It is just because 
terrors, and trials, and executions, have thrown around 
it the pomp and the circumstance of guilt. But at 
anotl^er bar, and on a. day of more dreadful solemnity, 
their guilt will be made to stand out in its essential 
characters, and their condemnation will be pronounced 
from the lips of Him who judgeth righteously. They 
feel that they have incurred no outrageous forfeiture 
of character among men, and this instils a treacherous 
complacency into their own hearts. But the piercing eye 
of Him who looketh down from heaven is upon the reality 
of the question ; and He who ponders the secrets of every 
bosom, can perceive, that the man who recoils only 
from such a degree of injustice as is notorious, may 
have no justice whatever in his character. He may 
have a sense of reputation. He may have the fear of 
detection and disgrace. He may feel a revolt in his 
constitution against the magnitude of a gross and glar- 
ing violation. He may even share in all the feelings 
and principles of that conventional kind of morality 
which obtains in his neighbourhood. But, of that 
principle which is surrendered by the least act of un- 
faithfulness, he has no share whatever. He perceives 
no overawing sacredness in that boundary which sepa- 
rates the right from the wrong. If he only keep de- 
cently near, it is a matter of indifference to him whether 
he be on this or on that side of it. He can be unfahh- 
ful in that which is least. There may be other princi- 
ples, and other considerations, to restrain him ; but 
certain it is, that it is not now the principle of justice 
which restrains him from being unfaithful in much. 
This is given up; and, through a blindness to the 
gi'eat and important prhicipie of our text, this virtue 



86 CHALMERS DlSCOUEtSES. 

may, in its essential character, be as good as banished 
from the world. All its protections may be utterly 
overthrown. The line of defence is effaced by which 
it ought to have been firmly and scrupulously guarded. 
The sign-posts of intimation, which ought to warn and 
to scare away, are planted along the barrier ; and 
when, in defiance to them, the barrier is broken, man 
will not be checked by any sense of honesty, at leasts 
from expatiating over the whole of the forbidden terri- 
tory. And thus may we gather from the countless 
peccadilloes which are so current in the various de- 
partments of trade, and service, and agency — from the 
secret freedoms in which many do indulge, without 
one remonstrance from their own hearts — from the 
petty inroads that are daily practised on the confines 
of justice, by which its line of demarcation is trodden 
underfoot, and it has lost the moral distinctness, and the 
moral charm, that should have kept it unviolate — from 
the exceeding multitude of such offences as are frivolous in 
respectofthe matter of them, but most fearfully import- 
ant in respect of the principle in which they originate — 
from the woful amount of that unseen and unrecorded 
guilt which escapes the cognizance of human law, but, on 
the application of the touchstone in our text, may be made 
to stand out in characters of severest condemnation— 
from instances, too numerous to repeat, but certainly 
too obvious to be missed, even by the observation of 
charity, may we gather the frailty of human principle, 
and the virulence of that moral poison, w hich is now in 
such full circulation to taint and to adulterate the char- 
acter of our species. 

Before finishing this branch of our subject, we may 
observCj that it is with this, as with many other phe- 



CHAL^tER-S PISCOUKSEB.. 



87 



iiomena of the human character, that wc are not long 
in contemplation upon it, without coming in sight of 
that great characteristic of fallen man, which meets 
and forces itself upon us in every view that we take of 
him — even the great moral disease of ungodliness. It 
is at the precise limit between the right and the vi^rong 
that the flaming sword of God's law is placed. It is 
there that " Thus saith the Lord" presents itself, in 
legible characters, to our view. It is there where the 
operation of his commandment begins ; and not at any 
of those higher gradations, where a man's dishonesty 
first appals himself by the chance of its detection, or 
appals others by the mischief and insecurity which it 
brings upon social life. An extensive fraud upon the 
revenue, for example, unpopular as this branch of jus- 
tice is, would bring a man down from his place of em- 
inence and credit in mercantile society. That petty 
fraud which is associated with so many of those smaller 
payments, where a lie in the written acknowledgment 
is both given and accepted, as a way of escape from 
the legal imposition, circulates at large among the 
members of the great trading community. In the for- 
mer, and in all the greater cases of injustice, there is a 
human restraint, and a human terror, in operation. 
There is disgrace and civil punishment to scare away. 
There arq all the sanctions of that conventional morality 
which is suspended on the fear of man, and the opinion 
of man ; and which, without so much as the recogni- 
tion of a God, would naturally point its armour against 
every outrage that could sensibly disturb the securities 
and the rights of human society. But so long as the 
disturbance is not sensible — so long as the injustice 
keeps within the limits of smallness and secrecy — -so 



gS ClIALMER'S DISCOURSES 

long as it is safe for the individual to practise it, and, 
borne along on the tide of general example and conni- 
vance, he has nothing to restrain him but that distinct 
and inflexible word of God, which proscribes all un- 
faithfulness, and aduiits of it in no degrees, and no 
modifications — then, let the almost universal sleep of 
conscience attest, how little of God there is in the 
virtue of this world ; and how much the peace and 
the protection of society are owing to such moralities, 
as the mere selfishness of man would lead him to or- 
dain, even in a community of atheists. 

11. Let us now attempt to unfold a few of the prac- 
tical consequences that may be drawn from the prin- 
ciple of the text, both in respect to our general rela- 
tion with God, and in respect to the particular lesson 
of faithfulness which may be educed froui it. 

1. There cannot be a stronger possible illustration 
of our argument, than the very first act of retribution 
that occurred in the history of our species. " And 
God said unto Adam, Of the tree of the knowledge of 
good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it. For in the day 
thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. But the 
woman took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave 
also unto her husband with her, and he did eat." 
What is it that invests the eating of a solitary apple 
with a grandeur so momentous ? How came an action 
in itself so minute, to be the germe of such mighty 
consequences ? How are we to understand that our 
first parents, by the doing of a single instant, not only 
brought death upon themselves^ but shed this big and 
baleful disaster over all their posterity ? We may not 



CHALMERS DISCOURSES. gg 

be able to answer all these questions, but we may at 
least leai-n, what a thing of danger it is, under the 
government of a holy and inflexible God, to tamper 
with the limits of obedience. By the eating of that 
apple a clear requirement was broken, and a distinct 
transition was made from loyalty to rebellion, and an 
entrance was effected into the region of sin — and thus 
did this one act serv^e like the opening of a gate for a 
torrent of mighty mischief; and, if the act itself was a 
trifle, it just went to aggravate its guilt — that, for such 
a trifle, the authority of God could be despised and 
trampled on. At all events, his attribute of Truth 
stood committed to the fulfilment of the threatening ; 
and the very insignificancy of tlie deed, which provoked 
the execution of it, gives a sublimer character to the 
certainty of the fulfilment. We know how much this 
trait, in the dealings of God with man, has been the 
jeer of infidehty. But in all this ridicule, there is truly 
nothing else than the grossness of materialism. Had 
Adiara, instead of plucking one single apple from the 
forbidden tree, been armed with the power of a malig- 
Hant spirit, and spread a wanton havock over the face 
of paradise, and spoiled the garden of its loveliness, and 
been able to mar and to deform the whole of that 
terrestrial creation over which God had so recently 
rejoiced— the punishment he sustained would have 
looked, to these arithmetical moralists, a more adequate 
return for the oflence of which he had been guilty. 
They cannot see how the moral lesson rises in great- 
ness, just in proportion to the humihty of the material 
accompaniments—and how it wraps a sublimer glory 
around the holiness of the Godhead — and how from the 
transacrioo, such as it is, the conclusion cometh forth 

1 /eV 



90 CHALMER S DISCOURSES. 

more nakedly, and, therefore, more impressively, tiiat 
it is an evil and a bitter thing to sin against the Law- 
giver. God said, " Let there be light, and it vi^as light;'' 
and it has ever been regarded as a sublime token of the 
Deity, that, from an utterance so simple, an accomplish- 
ment so quick and so magnificent should have follow- 
ed. God said, " That he who eateth of the tree in the 
midst of the garden should die." It appears, indeed, 
but a little thing, that one should put forth his hand to 
an apple and taste of it. But a saying of God was 
involved in the matter — and heaven and earth must 
pass away, ere a saying of his can pass away ; and so 
the apple became decisive of the fate of a world ; and, 
out of the very scantiness of the occasion, did there 
emerge a sublimer display of truth and of holiness. 
The beginning of thevvorld was, indeed, the period of 
great manifestations of the Godhead ; and they all 
seem to accord, in style and character, with each other; 
and in that very history, which has called forth the 
profane and unthinking levity of many a scorner, may 
we behold as much of the majesty of principle, as iii 
the creation of light, we behold of the majesty of 
power. 

But this history furnishes the materials of a conteni 
plation still more practical. If,, for this one offence, 
Adam and his posterity have been so visited — if so 
rigorously and so inflexibly precise be the spirit of God's 
administration— if, under the economy of heaven, sin, 
even in the very humblest of its exhibitions, be the ob- 
ject of an intolerance so jealous and so unrelenting — 
if the Deity be such as this transaction manifests him 
to be, disdainful of fellowship even with the verv least 



CHALMERS DISCOURSES. 91 

iniquity, and dreadful in the certainty of all his accom- 
plishments against it^ — if, for a single transgression, all 
the promise and all the felicity of paradise had to be 
broken up, and the wretched offenders had to be turned 
abroad upon a worlds now changed by the curse into 
a wilderness, and their secure and lovely home of in- 
nocence behoved to be abandoned, and to keep them 
out a flaming sword had to turn every way, and 
guard their reaccess to the bowers of immortality — 
if sin be so very hateful in the eye of unspotted holi- 
ness, that, on its very first act, and first appearance, 
the wonted communion between heaven and earth 
w'as interdicted — if that was the time at which God 
looked on our species with an altered countenance, 
and one deed of disobedience proved so terribly deci- 
sive of the fate and history of a world- — what should 
each individual amongst us think of his own danger, 
w^hose life has been one continued habit of disobe- 
dience ? If we be still in the hands of that God who 
laid so fell a condemnation on this one transgression, 
let us just think of our many transgressionsj and that 
every hour we live multiplies the account of them ; 
and that, however they may vanish from our own re- 
membrance, they are still alive in the records of a 
judge whose eye and whose memory never fail him. 
Let us transfer the lesson we have gotten of heaven's 
jurisprudence from the case of our first parents to our 
own case. Let us comj^are our lives with the law of 
God, and we shall find that our sins are past reckon- 
ing. Let us take account of the habitual posture of 
our souls, as a posture of dislike for the things that 
are above, and we shall find that our thoughts and our 
desires are ever running in one current of sinfulness. 



92 CHAtyMCRS DISC0tJKSK6 

Let us just make the computation how often we fail 
in the bidden chanty, and the bidden godliness, and 
the bidden long suffering — all as clearly bidden as the 
duty that was laid on our lirst parents — and we shall 
find, that we are borne down under a mountain of 
iniquity ; that, in the language of the Psalmist, our 
transgressions have gone over our heads, and, as a 
heavy burden, are too heavy for us ; and if we be in- 
deed under the government of Him who followed up 
the offence of the stolen apple by so dreadful a chas- 
tisement, then is wreith gone out unto the uttermost 
against every one of us. There is something in the 
history of that apple which might be brought specially 
to bear on the case of those small sinners who practise 
in secret at the work of their petty deprepations. But 
it also carries in it a great and a universal moral. It 
tells us that no sin is small. It serves a generalpurpose 
of conviction. It holds out a most alarming disclosure 
of the charge that is against us ; and makes it manifest 
to the conscience of him who is awakened thereby, 
that, unless God himself point out a way of escape^ 
we are indeed most hopelessly sunk in condemnation. 
And, seeing that such wrath went out from the sane- 
tuary of this unchangeable God, on the one offence of 
our first parents, it irresistibly follows, that if we, mani- 
fold in guilt, take not ourselves to his appointed wa}^ 
of reconciliation — if we refuse the overtures of Him, 
who then so visited the one offence through which all 
are dead, but is now laying before us all that free gift, 
which is of many offences unto justification— in other 
words, if we will not enter into peace through the of- 
fered Mediator, how much griJ^ater must be the wrath 
that abideth on us ? 



CHALMER'S DiSCOURSElS 93 

Now, let the sinner have his conscience schooled by 
Such a contemplation, and there will be no rest what- 
ever for his soul till he find it in the Saviour. Let him 
only learn, from the dealings of God with the first 
Adam, what a God of hohness he himself has to deal 
with ; and let him further learn, from the history of 
the second Adam, that to manifest himself as a God 
of love, another righteousness had to be brought in, in 
place of that from which man had fallen so utterly 
away. There was a fauUless obedience rendered by 
Him, of whom it is said, that he fulfilled all righteous- 
ness. There was a magnifying of the law by one in 
human form, who up to the last jot and tittle of it, ac- 
quitted himself of all its obligations. There was a 
pure, and lofty, and undefiled path, trodden by a holy 
and harmless Being, who gave not up his work upon 
earth, till ere he left it, he could cry out, that it was 
finished; and so had wrought out fo: us a perfect 
righteousness. Now, it forms the most prominent an- 
nunciation of the New Testament, that the reward of 
this righteousness is offered unto all- — so that there is 
not one of us who is not put by the gospel upon the alter- 
native of being either tried by our own merits, or 
treated according to the merits of Him who became 
sin for us, though he knew no sio, that we might be 
made the righteousness of God in him. Let the sin- 
ner just look unto himself, and look unto the Savioun 
Let him advert not to his one, but to his many offences ; 
and that, too, in the sight of a God, who, but for one so 
slight and so insignificant in respect of the outward de- 
scription, as the eating of a forbidden apple, threw off a 
world into banishment and entailed a sentence of death 
upon all its generations. Let him learn from this, that 



Q4 CHALMERS DISCOURSES, 

for sill, even in lis humblest degrees, there exists in the 
bosom of the Godhead no toleration ; and how shall 
he dare, with the degree and the frequency of his own 
sin, to stand any longer on a ground, where, if he re- 
main, the fierceness of a consuming fire is so sure to 
overtake him ? The righteousness of Christ is with- 
out a flaw, and there he is invited to take shelter. 
Under the actual regimen, which God has established 
in our world, it is indeed his only security ^ — his refuge 
from the tempest, and hiding place from the storm. 
The only beloved son offers to spread his own unspot- 
ted garment as a protection over him ; and, if he be 
rightly alive to the utter nakedness of his moral and 
spiritual condition, he wdll indeed make no tarrying 
till he be found in Christ, and find that in him there is 
no condemnation. 

Now, it is worthy of remark, that those principles, 
which shut a man up unto the faith, do not take flight 
and abandon him, after they have served this tempo- 
rary purpose. They abide v/ith him, and work their ap- 
propriate influence on his character, and serve as the 
germe of a new moral creation ; and we can afterwards 
detect their operation in his heart and Jife ; so, that if 
they were present at the formation of a saving belief, 
they are not less unfailingly present with every true 
Christian, throughout the whole of his future history, 
as the elements of a renovated conduct. If it was 
sensibility to the evil of sin which helped to wean the 
man from himself, and led him to his Saviour, this sen- 
sibility does not fall asleep in the bosom of an awakened 
sinner, after Christ has given him light — but it grows 
with the growth, and strengthens with the strength, of 



OHALMEK'S DISCOURSES. 95 

his Christianity. If, at the interesting period of his 
transition from nature to grace, he saw, even in the 
very least of liis offences, a deadly provocation of the 
Lav\^iver, he does not lose sight of this consideration 
in his future progress — nor does it barely remain 
with liim, like one of the unproductive notions of 
an inert and unproductive theory. It gives rise to 
a fearful jeah)usy in his heart of the least appearance 
of evil; and, with every man who has undergone a 
genuine process of conversion, do we behold the scru- 
pulous avoidance of sin, in its most slender, as well as 
in its more aggravated forms. If it was the perfection 
of the character of Christ, who felt that it became him 
to fulfil all righteousness, that offered him the first soHd 
foundation on which he could lean — then, the same 
character, which first drew his eye for the purpose of 
confidence, still continues to draw his eye for the pur- 
pose of imitation. At the outset of faith, all the es- 
sential moralities of thought, and feeling, and conviction^ 
are in play ; nor is there any thing in the progress of a 
real faith which is calculated to throw them back again 
into the dormancy out of which they had arisen. They 
break out, in fac!, into more full and flourishing display 
on every new creature, with every new step, and new- 
evolution, in his mental history. All the principles of 
the gospel serve, as it were, to fan and to perpetuate 
his hostility against sin ; and all the powers of the 
gospel enable him, more and more, to fulfd the desires 
of his heart, and to carry his purposes of hostility into 
execution. In the case of every genuine believer, who 
walks not after the flesh, but after the spirit, do we 
behold a fulfilling of the righteousness of the law— a 
strenuous avoidance of sin, in its slightest possible taint 



90 CHALMEK'S DISCOUKSES. 

or modification—a strenuous performance of duty, up 
to the last jot and tittle of its exactions — so, that let 
the untrue professors of the faith do what they will in 
the way of antinomianism, and let the enemies of the 
faith say what they will about our antinomianism, the 
real spirit of the dispensation under which we live is 
such, that whosoever shall break one of the least of 
these commandments, and teach men so, is accounted 
the least- — whosoever shall do and teach them is ac- 
counted the greatest. 

2. Let us, therefore, urge the sphit and the practice 
of this lesson upon your observation. The place for 
the practice of it is the familiar and week-day scene. 
The principle for the spirit of it descends upon the 
heart, from the subhmest heights of the sanctuary of 
God. It is not vulgarizing Christianity to bring it 
down to the very humblest occupations of human life. 
It is, in fact, dignifying human life, by bringing it up 
to the level of Christianity. It may look to some a 
degradation of the pulpit, when the household servant 
is told to make her firm stand against the temptation 
of open doors, and secret opportunities ; or when the 
confidential agent is told to resist the slightest inclina- 
tion to any unseen freedom with the property of his 
employers, or to any undiscoverable excess in the 
charges of his management ; or when the receiver of 
a humble payment is told, that the tribute which is due 
on every written acknowledgment ought faithfully to 
be met, and not fictitiously to be evaded. This is not 
robbing religion of its sacredness, but spreading its sa- 
credness over the face of society. It is evangelizing 
iumian life, by impregnating it? minutest transactions 



CHALMERS DISCOURSES. 9^7 

with the spirit of the gospel. It is strengthening the 
wall of partition between sin and obedience. It is the 
Teacher of righteousness taking his stand at the out- 
post of that territory which he is appointed to defend, 
and warning his hearers of the danger that lies in a 
single footstep of encroachment. It is letting them 
know, that it is in the act of stepping over the limit, 
that the sinner throws the gauntlet of his defiance 
against the authority of God. And though he may 
deceive himself with the imagination that his soul is 
safe, because the gain of his injustice is small, such is 
the God with whom he has to do, that, if it be gain to 
the value of a single apple, then, within the compass of 
so small an outward dimension, may as much guilt be 
enclosed as that which hath brought death into our 
world, and carried it down in a descending ruin upon 
all its generations. 

It may appear a very little thing, when you are told 
to be honest in little matters ; when the servant is told 
to keep her hand from every one article about which 
there is not an express or understood allowance on the 
part of her superiors ; when the dealer is told to lop off 
the excesses of that minuter fraudulency, which is so 
currently practised in the humble walks of merchan- 
dise ; when the workman is told to abstain from those 
petty reservations of the material of his work, for 
which he is said to have such snug and ample opportu- 
nity ; and when, without pronouncing on the actual 
extent of these transgressions, all are told to be faith- 
ful in that which is least, else, if there be truth in our 
text, they incur the guilt of being unfaithful in much. 
It may be thought^ that because such dishonesties as 

W 



9S CHALMER'S DISCOURSES. 

these are scarcely noticeable, they are therefore not 
worthy of notice. But it is just in the proportion of 
their being unnoticeable by the human eye, that it is 
religious to refrain from them. These are the cases in 
which it will be seen, whether the control of the om- 
niscience of God makes up for the control of human 
observation — in which the sentiment, that thou God 
seest me, should carry a preponderance through all the 
secret places of a man's history — in which, when every 
earthly check of an earthly morality is withdrawn, 
it should be felt, that the eye of God is upon him, 
and that the judgment of God is in reserve for 
him. To him who is gifted with a true discernment 
of these matters, will it appear, that often, in propor- 
tion to the smallness of the doings, is the sacredness 
of that principle which causes them to be done 
with integrity; that honesty, in little transactions, 
bears upon it more of the aspect of holiness, than 
honesty in great ones ; that the man of deepest sensi- 
bility to the obligations of the law, is he who feels the 
quickening of moral alarm at its slightest violations ; 
that, in the morality of grains and of scruples, there 
may be a greater tenderness of conscience, and a more 
heaven-born sanctity, than in that larger morality 
which flashes broadly and observably upon the world ; 
—and that thus, in the faithfulness of the household 
maid, or of the apprentice boy, there may be the pres- 
ence of a truer principle, than there is in the more con- 
spicuous transactions of human business — what they 
do, being done, not with eye-service— what they do, 
being done unto the Lord. 

And here we raav remark, that nobleness of condi- 



CHALMEII'S DISCOUKSES. 99 

tloii is not essential as a school for nobleness of charac- 
ter ; nor does man require to be high in office, ere he 
can gather around his person the worth and the lustre 
of a high-minded integrity. It is delightful to thinks 
that humble hfe may be just as rich in moral grace, and 
moral grandeur, as the loftier places of society ; that as 
true a dignity of principle may be earned by him who 
in homeliest drudgery, plies his conscientious task, as 
by him who stands entrusted with the fortunes of an 
empire ; that the poorest menial in the land, who can 
lift a hand unsoiled by the pilferments that are within 
his reach, may have achieved a victory over temptation^ 
to the full as honourable as the proudest patriot can 
boast, who has spurned the bribery of courts away 
from him. It is cheering to know, from the heavenly 
judge himself, that he who is faithful in the least, is 
faithful also in much ; and that thus, among the 
labours of the field and of the work-shop, it is possible 
for the peasant to be as bright in honour as the peer, 
and have the chivalry of as much truth and virtue to 
adorn him. 

And, as this lesson is not little in respect of priilciplej 
so neither is it little in respect of influence on the order 
and well-being of human society. He who is unjust 
in the least, is, in respect of guilt, unjust also in much* 
And to reverse this proposition, as it is done in the 
first clause of our text— he who is faithful in that which 
is least, is, in respect both of righteous principle and 
of actual observation, faithful also in much. Who is 
the man to whom I w^ould most readily confide the 
w hole of my property ? He who would most disdain 
to put forth an injurious hand on a single farthing of in 



Who is the man from whom I would have the least 
dread of any unrighteous encroachment ? He, all the 
delicacies of whose principle are awakened, when he 
comes within sight of the limit which separates the re- 
gion of justice from the region of injustice. Who is the 
man whom we shall never find among the greater de- 
o:rees of iniquity ? He who shrinks with sacred abhor- 
rence from the lesser degrees of it. It is a true, though 
a homely maxim of economy, that if we take care of 
our small sums, our great sums will take care of them- 
selves. And, to pass from our own things to the things 
of others, it is no less true, that if principle should lead 
us all to maintain the care of strictest honesty over our 
neighbour's pennies, then will his pounds lie secure 
from the grasp of injustice, behind the barrier of a moral 
impossibility. This lesson, if carried into effect among 
you, w^ould so strengthen all the ramparts of security 
Ijetween man and man, as to make them utterly impas- 
sable ; and therefore, while, in the matter of it, it may 
look, in one view, as one of the least of the command- 
ments, it, in regard both of principle and of effect, is, 
in another view of it, one of the greatest of the com- 
mandments. And we therefore conclude with assur- 
ing you, that nothing will spread the principle of this 
commandment to any great extent throughout the 
mass of society, but the principle of godhness. Noth- 
ing will secure the general observation of justice 
amongst us, in its punctuaHty and in its preciseness, but 
such a precise Christianity as many aflfirm to be puri- 
tanical. In other words, the virtues of society, to be 
kept in a healthfid and prosperous condition, must be 
upheld by the virtues of the sanctuary. Human law 
may restrain many of the grosser violations. But 



CHALMEK'S JJiSCOUKSES. lOJj 

without religion among the people, justice will never 
be in extensive operation as a moral principle. A vast 
proportion of the species will be as unjust as the vigi- 
lance and the severities of law allow them to be. A 
thousand petty dishonesties, which never will, and 
never can be brought within the cognizance of any of 
oul' courts of administration, will still continue to de- 
range the business of human life, and to stir up all the 
heartburnings of suspicion and resentment among the 
members of human society. And it is, indeed, a 
triumphant reversion awaiting the Christianity of the 
New Testament, when it shall become manifest as day, 
that it is her doctrine alone, which, by its searching 
and sanctifying influence, can so moralise our world — 
as that each may sleep secure in the lap of his neigh- 
bour's integrity, and the charm of confidence, between 
man and man, will at length be felt in the business of 
every town, and in the bosom of every family. 



DISCOURSE V. 



ON THE GUEAT CHRISTIAN LAW OF RECIPROCITY BETWEEN 

MAN AND MAN. 



"Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to youj 
do ye even so to them : for this is the law and the prophets." — Matt. 
vii. 12. 

There are two great classes in human society, be- 
tween whom there lie certain mutual claims and obli- 
gations, which are felt by some to be of very difficult 
adjustment. There are those who have requests of 
some kind or other to make ; and there are those to 
whom the requests are made, and vvith whom there is 
llodged the power either to grant or to refuse them* 
Now, at first sight, it would appear, that the firm ex- 
ercise of this power of refusal is the only barrier by 
which the latter class can be secured against the inde- 
finite encroachments of the former ; and that, if this 
were removed all the safeguards of right and property 
would be removed along with it. The power of refu- 
sal, on the part of those who have the right of refusal j 
may be abolished by an act of violence, on the part 
of those who have it not ; and then, when this happens 
in individual cases, we have the crimes of assault and 
robbery ; and when it happens on a more extended 
scale, we have anarchy and insurrection in the 
land. Or the power of refusal may be taken away 
by an authoritative precept of religion ; and then might 
it still be matter of apprehension, lest our only defence 



CHALMER'S DISCOURSE! IO3 

against the inroads of selfishness and injustice were as 
good as given up, and lest the peace and interest of fami- 
lies should be laid open to a most fearful exposure, by 
the enactments of a romantic and impracticable system. 
Whenever this is apprehended, the temptation is 
strongly felt, either to rid ourselves of the enactments 
altogether, or at least to bring them down in nearer 
accommodation to the feelings and the conveniences 
of men. 

And Christianity, on the very first blush of it, ap- 
pears to be precisely such a religion. It seems to take 
away all lawfulness of resistance from the possessor, 
and to invest the demander with such an extent of 
privilege, as would make the two classes of society, to 
which we have just now adverted, speedily change 
places. And this is the true secret of the many laborious 
deviations that have been attempted, in this branch of 
morality, on the obvious meaning of the New Testa- 
ment. This is the secret of those many qualifying 
clauses, by which its most luminous announcements 
have been beset, to the utter darkening of them. This 
it is which explains the many sad invasions that have 
been made on the most manifest and undeniable liter- 
alities of the law and of the testimony. And our 
present text, among others, has received its full share 
of mutilation, and of what may be called " dressing 
up," from the hands of commentators — it having 
wakened the very alarms of which we have just spo- 
ken, and called forth the very attempts to quiet and to 
subdue them. Surely, it has been said, we can never 
be required to do unto others what they have no right, 
and no reason, to expect from us. The demand must 



104 CHALMER'S DISCOURSES. 

not be an extravagant one. It must lie within the 
limits of moderation. It must be such as, in the esti- 
mation of every justly thinking person, is counted fair 
in the circumstances of the case. The principle on 
which our Saviour, in the text, rests the obligation of 
doing any particular thing to others, is, that we wish 
others to do that thing unto us. But this is too much 
for an affrighted selfishness ; and, for her own protec- 
tion, she would put forth a defensive sophistry upon 
the subject : and in place of that distinctly announced 
principle, on which the Bible both directs and specifies 
wliat the things are which we should do unto others, 
does she substitute another principle entirely — which is, 
merely to do unto others such things as are fair, and 
right, and reasonable. 

Now, there is one clause of this verse which would 
appear to lay a positive interdict on all these qualifi- 
cations. How shall we dispose of a phrase, so sweep- 
ing and universal in its import, as that of " all things 
whatsoever ?" We cannot think that such an expres- 
sion as this was inserted for nothing, by him who has 
told us, that " cursed is every one who taketh away 
from the words of this book." There is no distinction 
laid down between things fair, and things unfair — be- 
tween things reasonable, and things unreasonable. 
Both are comprehended in the " all things whatsoever." 
The signification is plain and absolute, that, let the 
thing be what it may, if you wish others to do that 
thing for you, it lies imperatively upon you to do the 
very same thing for them also. 

But, at this rate, you may think that the whole 



CHALMERS' DISCOURSES. J05 

system of human intercourse would go into unhinge- 
ment. You may wish your next-door neighbour to 
present you with half his fortune. In this case, we 
know not how you are to escape from the conclusion, 
that you are bound to present him with the half of 
yours. Or you may wish a relative to burden him- 
self with the expenses of all your family. It is then 
Impossible to save you from the positive obligation, if 
you are equally able for it, of doing the same service 
to the family of another. Or you may wish to en- 
gross the whole time of an acquaintance in personal 
attendance upon yourself. Then, it is just your part 
to do the same extent of civility to another who may 
desire it. These are only a few specifications, out of 
the manifold varieties, whether of service or of dona- 
tion, which are conceivable between one man and 
another; nor are we aw^are of any artifice of expla- 
nation by which they can possibly be detached from 
the " all things whatsoever" of the verse before us. 
These are the literalities which we are not at liberty 
to compromise — but are bound to urge, and that 
simply, according to the terms in which they have 
been conveyed to us by the great Teacher of right- 
eousness. This may raise a sensitive dread in many 
a bosom. It may look like the opening of a flood- 
gate, through which a torrent of human rapacity 
would be made to set in on the fair and measured 
domains of property, and by which all the fences of 
legality would be overthrown. It is some such fearful 
anticipation as this which causes casuistry to ply its 
wily expedients, and busily to devise its many limits, 
aaid its many exceptions, to the morality of the New 

14 



10Q iMALMms- ijih<.>j\ni.>i:^. 

Testament, And yet, we think it possible to demon- 
strate of our text, that no such modifying is requisite : 
and that, though admitted strictly and rigorously as 
the rule of our daily conduct, it would lead to no 
practical conclusions which are at all formidable. 

For, what is the precise circumstance which lays 
the obligation of this precept upon you ? There may 
be other places in the Bible where you are required to 
do things for the benefit of your neighbour, whether 
you would wish your neighbour to do these things for 
your benefit or not. But this is not the requirement 
here. There is none other thing laid upon you in this 
place, than that you should do that good action in be- 
half of another, which you would like that other to 
do in behalf of yourself. If you would not like him 
to do it for you, then there is nothing in the compass 
of this sentence now before you, that at all obligates 
yon to do it for him. If you would not like your 
neighbour to make so romantic a surrender to youf 
interest, as to offer you to the extent of half his for- 
tune, then there is nothing in that part of the gospel 
code which now engages us, that renders it impera- 
tive upon you to make the same offer to your neigh- 
bour. If you would positively recoil, in all the reluc- 
tance of ingenuous delicacy, from the selfishness of 
laying on a relation the burden of the expenses of all 
your family, then this is not the good office that you 
would have him to do unto you ; and this, therefore, 
is not the good office which the text prescribes you to 
do unto him. If you have such consideration for an- 
other's ease, and another's convenience, that you 



CHALMERS* DISCOURSES. IO7 

could not take the ungenerous advantage of so much 
of his time for your accommodation, there may be 
other verses in the Bible which point to a greater sa- 
crifice, on your part, for the good of others, than you 
would like these others to makq for yours ; but, most 
assuredly, this is not the verse which imposes that sa- 
crifice. If you would not that others should do these 
things on your account, then these things form no 
part of the " all things whatsoever" you would that 
men should do unto you ; and, therefore, they form no 
part of the " all things whatsoever" that you are re- 
<]uired, by this verse, to do unto them. The bare 
circumstance of your positively not wishing that any 
such services should be rendered unto you, exempts 
you, as far as the single authority of this precept is 
concerned, from the obligation of rendering these ser° 
vices to others. This is the limitation to the extent 
of those services which are called for in the text ; and 
it is surely better, that every limitation to a command- 
ment of God's, should be defined by God himself^ 
than that it should be drawn from the assumptions of 
human fancy, or from the fears and the feelings of hu- 
man convenience. 

Let a man, in fact, give himself up to a strict and 
literal observation of the precept in this verse, and it 
will impress a two-fold direction upon him. It will 
not only guide him to certain performances of good in 
behalf of others, but it will guide him to the regulation 
of his own desires of good from them. For his desires 
of good from others are here set up as the .measure of 
his performances of good to others. The more selfish 
and unbounded his desires are, the larger are those 



iQg CHALMERS' DJ5COURSEi5^ 

performances with the obligation of which he is bur- 
dened. Whatsoever he would that others should do 
unto him, he is bound to do unto them ; and, therefore, 
the more he gives way to ungenerous and extravagant 
wishes of service from those who are around him, the 
heavier and more insupportable is the load of duty 
which he brings upon himself. The commandment 
is quite imperative, and there is no escaping from it ; 
and if he, by the excess of his selfishness, should render 
it impracticable, then the whole punishment, due to 
the guilt of casting aside the authority of this com- 
mandment, follows in that train of punishment which 
is annexed to selfishness. There is one way of being 
relieved from such a burden. There is one way of re- 
ducing this verse to a moderate and practicable re- 
quirement ; and that is, just to give up selfishness — 
just to stifle all ungenerous desires— -just to moderate 
every wish of service or liberality from others, down 
to the standard of what is right and equitable ; and 
then there may be other verses in the Bible, by which 
we are called to be kind even to the evil and the un- 
thankful. But, most assuredly, this verse lays upon us 
none other thing, than that we should do such services 
for others as are right and equitable. 

The more extravagant, then, a man's wishes of ac- 
commodation from others are, the wider is the distance 
between him dnd the bidden performances of our text.. 
The separation of him from his duty increases at the 
rate of two bodies receding from each other by equal 
and contrary movements. The more selfish his desires 
of service are from others, the more feeble, on that 
very account, will be his desires of making any sur- 
render of himself to them, and yet the greater is xh(' 



CHALMERS' DISCOURSES, 109 

amount of that surrender which is due. The poor 
man, in fact, is moving himself away from the rule; 
and the rule is just moving as fast away from the man. 
As he sinks, in the scale of selfishness, beneath the point 
of a fair and moderate expectation from others, does 
the rule rise, in the scale of duty, with its demands 
upon him ; and thus there is rendered to him double for 
every unfair and ungenerous imposition that he would 
make on the kindness of those who are around him. 

Now, there is one way, and a very effectual one, of 
getting these two ends to meet. Moderate your own 
desires of service from others, and you will moderate, 
in the same degree, all those duties of service to others 
which are measured by these desires. Have the deli- 
cacy to abstain from any wish of encroachment on the 
convenience or property of afiother. Have the high- 
mindedness to be indebted for your own support to 
the exertions of your own honourable industry, rather 
than to the dastardly habit of preying on the simplicity of 
those around you. Have such a keen sense of equity, 
and such a fine tone of independent feeling, that you 
could not bear to be the cause of hardship or distress to a 
single human creature, if you could help it. Let the 
same spirit be in you, which the Apostle wanted to ex- 
emplify before the eye of his disciples, when he coveted 
no man's gold, or silver, or apparel ; when he laboured 
not to be chargeable to any of them ; but wrought 
with his own hands, rather than be burdensome. Let 
this mind be in you, which was also in the Apostle of 
the Gentiles ; and then, the text before us will not 
come near you with a single oppressive or impracti- 
cable requirement. There may be other passages^ 



~liO CHALMERS' DISCOURSES. 

where you are called to go beyond the strict line of 
justice, or common humanity, in behalf of your suffer- 
ing brethren. But this passage does not touch you 
with any such preceptive imposition : and you, by 
moderating your wishes from others down to what is 
fair and equitable, do, in fact, reduce the rule which 
binds you to act according to the measure of these 
wishes, down to a rule of precise and undeviating 
equity. 

The operation is somewhat like that of a governor, 
or fly, in mechanism. This is a very happy contri- 
vance, by which all that is defective or excessive in the 
motion, is confined within the limits of equability ; and 
every tendency, in particular, to any mischievous ac- 
celeration, is restrained. The impulse given by this 
verse to the conduct of man among his fellows, would 
seem, to a superficial observer, to carry him to all the 
excesses of a most ruinous and quixotic benevolence. 
But let him only look to the skilful adaptation of the 
fly. Just suppose the control of moderation and equit}^ 
to be laid upon his own wishes, and there is not a 
single impulse given to his conduct beyond the rate of 
moderation and equity. You are not required here to 
do all things whatsoever in behalf of others, but to do 
all things whatsoever for them, that you would should 
be done unto yourself. This is the check by which 
the whole of the bidden movement is governed, and 
kept from running out into any hurtful excess. And 
such is the beautiful operation of that piece of moral 
mechanism that we are now employed in contempla- 
ting, that while it keeps down all the aspirations of 
selfishness, it does., in fact, restrain every extravagancy, 



ClIALMEKS DISCOURSES/ m 

and impresses on its obedient subjects no other move- 
inentj than that of an even and inflexible justice. 

This rule of our Saviour's, then, prescribes modera- 
tion to our desires of good from others, as well as 
generosity to our doings in behalf of others ; and 
makes the first the measure of obligation to the second. 
It may thus be seen how easily, in a Christian society ^ 
the whole work of benevolence could be adjusted, so as 
to render it possible for the givers not only to meet, 
but also to overpass, the wishes and expectations of the 
receivers. The rich man may have a heavier obliga- 
tion laid upon him by other precepts of the New 
Testament ; but, by this precept, he is not bound to 
do more for the poor man, than what he himself w^ould 
wish, in like circumstances, to be done for him. And 
let the poor man, on the other hand, wish for no more 
than what a Christian ought to wish for ; let him work 
and endure to the extent of nature's sufferance, rather 
than beg-— and only beg, rather than that he should 
starve ; and in such a state of principle among men, a 
tide of beneficence would so go forth upon all the va- 
cant places in society, as that there should be no room 
to receive it. The duty of the rich, as connected with 
this administration, is of so direct and positive a charac- 
ter, as to obtrude itself at once on the notice of the 
Christian moralist. But the poor also have a duty in 
it — to which we feel ourselves directed by the train of 
argument which we have now been prosecuting — and 
a duty, too, we think, of far greater importance even 
than the other, to the best interests of mankind. 

For, let us first contrast the rich man who is unseen- 



7 22 CHALMERS' DISCOURSES 

erous in his doings, with the poor man who is ungen- 
erous in his desires : and see from which of the two 
it is, that the cause of charity receives the deadlier in- 
fliction. There is, it must be admitted, an individual 
to be met with occasionally, who represents the former 
of these two characters ; with every affection gravita- 
ting to self, and to its sordid gratifications and interests : 
bent on his own pleasure, or his own avarice — and so 
engrossed with these, as to have no spare feeling at all 
for the brethren of his common nature ; with a heart 
obstinately shut against that most powerful of applica- 
tions, the look of genuine and imploring distress — 
and whose very countenance speaks a surly and deter- 
mined exclusion on every call that proceeds from it : 
Who, in a tumult of perpetual alarm about new cases, 
and new tales of suffering, and new plans of philan- 
thropy, has at length learned to resist and to resent 
everyone of them ; and, spurning the whole of this 
disturbance impatiently away, to maintain a firm de- 
fensive over the close system of his own selfish luxu- 
ries, and his own snug accommodations. Such a man 
keeps back, it must be allowed from the cause of 
charity, what he ought to have rendered to it in his 
own person. There is a dini^inution of the philanthro- 
pic fund up to the extent of what benevolence would 
have awarded out of his individual means, and indi- 
vidual opportunities. The good cause is a sufferer, 
not by any positive blow it has sustained, but by the 
simple negation of one friendly and fostering hand, 
that else might have been stretched forth to aid and 
patronise it. There is only so much less of direct 
countenance and support, than would otherwise have 
been : for, in this om- age. we have no conception 



CHALMERS' D1SC0DR3E?. li;} 

^ihatever of such an example being at all infectiou^o 
For a man to wallow in prosperity himself and be un* 
mindful of the wretchedness that is around him, is an 
exhibition of altogether so ungainly a character, that 
it will far oftener provoke an observer to affront it by 
the contrast of his own generosity, than to render it the 
approving testimony of his imitation. So that all we 
have lost by the man who is ungenerous in his doings, is 
his own contribution to the cause of philanthropy. And 
it is a loss that can be borne. The cause of this world's 
beneficence can do abundantly without him. There 
is a ground that is yet unbroken, and there are resour-^ 
ces which are still unexplored, that will yield a far 
more substantial produce to the good of humanity, 
than he, and thousands as wealthy as he, could render 
to it, out of all their capabilities. 

But there is a far wider mischief inflicted on the 
cause of charity, by the poor man who is ungenerous^in 
his desires ; by him, whom every act of kindness h 
sure to call out to the reaction of some new demand^ 
or new" expectation ; by him, on whom the hand of a 
giver has the effect, not of appeasing his w ants, but of 
inflaming his rapacity; by him who trading among 
the sympathies of the credulous, can dexterously ap- 
propriate for himself a portion tenfold greater than 
what would have blest and brightened the aspect of 
many a deserving family. Hiin we denounce as the 
worst enemy of the poor. It is he w hose ravenous 
gripe wrests from them a far more abundant 
benefaction, than is done by the most lordly and un- 
feeling^proprietor in the land. He is the arch-oppress- 
or of hh brethren : and the amount of the robbery 

-15 



]|4 CHALMERS DISCOUKSES, 

which he has practised upon them, is not to be estima- 
ted by the alms which he has monopolised, by the food, 
or the raiment, or the money, which he has diverted 
to himself, from the more modest sufferers around him. 
He has done what is infinitely worse than turning 
aside the stream of charity. He has closed its flood- 
gates. He has chilled and alienated the hearts of the 
Avealthy, by the gall of bitterness which he has infused 
into this whole ministration. A few such harpies would 
suffice to exile a whole neighbourhood from the atten- 
tions of the benevolent, by the distrust and the jealousy 
wherewith they have poisoned their bosoms, and laid 
an arrest on ail the sensibilities that else w^ould have 
flowed from them. It is he who, ever on the watch 
and on the wing about some enterprise of imposture, 
makes it his business to work and to pray on the com- 
passionate principles of our nature ; it is he who, in 
effect, grinds the faces of the poor, and that, with dead- 
lier severity than even is done by the great baronial 
tyrant, the battlements of whose castle seem to frown, 
in all the pride of aristocracy, on the territory that is 
l)efore it. There is, at all times, a kindliness of feel- 
ing ready to stream forth, with a tenfold greater liber- 
ality than ever, on the humble orders of life ; and it is 
he, and such as he, who have congealed it. He has 
raised a jaundiced medium between the rich and the 
poor, in virtue of which, the former eye the latter with 
suspicion ; and there is not a man who wears the garb, 
and prefers the applications of poverty, that has not 
suffered from the worthless imposter who has gone be- 
fore him. They are, in fact, the deceit, and the indo- 
lence, and the low sordidness of a few who have made 
outcasts of the many, mu\ locked against them the 



CHALMERS' DISCOURSES. .115 

feelings of the wealthy in a kind of iron imprisonment. 
The rich man who is ungenerous in his doings keeps 
back one labourer from the field of charity. But 
a poor man who is ungenerous in his desires, can 
expel a thousand labourers in disgust away from it. 
He sheds a cruel and extended blight over the fair re- 
gion of philanthropy ; and many have abandoned it, 
who, but for him, would fondly have lingered there- 
upon ; very many,, who, but for the way in which 
their simplicity has been tried and trampled upon, 
would still have tasted the luxury of doing good unto 
the poor, and made it their delight, as well as their 
duty, to expend and expatiate among their habitations. 

We say not this to exculpate the rich ; for it is their 
part not to be weary in well-doing, but to prosecute 
the work and the labour of love under every discourage- 
ment. Neither do we say this to the disparagement 
of the poor ; for the picture we have given is of the few 
out of the many ; and the closer the acquaintance with 
humble life becomes, will it be the more seen of what 
a high pitch of generosity even the very poorest are 
capable. They, in truth, though perhaps they are not 
aware of it, can contribute more to the cause of charity, 
by the moderation of their desires, than the rich can by 
the generosity of their doings. They, without, it may 
be, one penny to bestow, might obtain a place in the 
record of heaven, as the most liberal benefactors of 
their species. There is nothing in the humble condi- 
tion of life they occupy, which precludes them from all 
that is great or graceful in human charity. There is a 
way in which they may equal, and even outpeer, the 
wealthiest of the land, in that verv virtue of which 



115 CBAtMERS' DISCOUHSJES. 

wealth alone has been conceived to have the exclusive 
inheritance. There is a pervading character in humani- 
ty which the varieties of rank do not obliterate ; and 
as, in virtue of the common corruption, the poor man 
may be as effectually the rapacious despoiler of his 
brethren, as the man of opulence above him — so, there 
is a common excellence attainable bv both : and 
through which, the poor man may, to the full, be as 
splendid in generosity as^jh^ich, and yield a far more 
important contribution tQ -ttie peace and comfort of 
socletv. 

To make this plain — it is in virtue of a generous 
doing on the part of a rich man, when a sum of money 
is offered for the relief of want ; and it is in virtue of 
a generous desire on the part of a poor man, when this 
money is refused ; when, with the feeling, that his 
necessities do not just warrant him to be yet a burden 
upon others, he declines to touch the offered liberality ; 
when, with a delicate recoil from the unlooked-for 
proposal, he still resolves to put it for the present away, 
and to find, if possible, for himself a little longer ; 
when, standing on the very margin of dependance, he 
would yet like to struggle with the difficulties of his 
situation, and to maintain this severe but honourable 
conflict, till hard necessity should force him to surrender. 
Let the money which he has thus so nobly shifted from 
himself take some new direction to another ; and who, 
we ask, is the giver of it ? The first and most obvious 
reply is, that it is he who owned it : but, it is still more 
emphatically true, that it is he who has declined it. 
It came originally out of the rich man's abundance ; 
but it was the noble-hearted generosity of the poor man 



CHALMERS' Discourses. 317 

that handed it onwards to its final destination. He did 
not emanate the gift ; but it is just as much that he has 
not absorbed it, but left it to find its full conveyance 
to some neighbour poorer than himself, to some family 
still more friendless and destitute than his own. It 
was given the first time out of an overflowing fulness. 
It is given the second time out of stinted and self-deny- 
ing penury. In the world's eye, it is the proprietor 
who bestowed the charity. But, in heaven's eye, the 
poor man who waived it away from himself to another 
is the more illustrious philanthropist of the two. The 
one gave it out of his affluence. The other gave it out 
of the sweat of his brow. He rose up early, and sat 
up late, that he might have it to bestow on a poorer 
than himself ; and without once stretching forth a 
giver's hand to the necessities of his brethren, still is it 
possible, that by him, and such as him, may the main 
burden of this world's benevolence be borne. 

It need scarcely.be remarked, that, without suppos- 
ing the ofifer of any sum made to a poor man who is 
generous in his desires, he, by simply keeping himself 
back from the distributions of charity, fulfils all the 
high functions which we have now ascribed to him. 
He leaves the charitable fund untouched for all that 
distress which is more clamorous than his own ; and 
we, therefore, look, not to the original givers of the 
money, but to those who line, as it were, the margin 
of pauperism, and yet firmly refuse to enter it — we 
look upon them as the pre-eminent benefactors of soci- 
ety, who narrow, as it were, by a wall of defence, the 
ground of human dependance, and are, in fact, the 
guides and the guardians of all that opulence can be- 
stow. 



lis CHALMERS' DISCOURSES, 

Thus it is, that when Christianity becomes universalj 
the doings of the one party, and the desires of the other^ 
will meet and overpass. The poor will wish for no 
more than the rich will be delighted to bestow ; and 
the rule of our text, which every real Christian at pre- 
sent finds so practicable, will, when carried over the 
face of society, bind all the members of it into one con- 
senting brotherhood. The duty of doing good to others 
will then coalesce with that counterpart duty which regu- 
lates our desires of good from them ; and the work of 
benevolence will, at length, be prosecuted without 
that alloy of rapacity on the one hand, and distrust on 
the other, which serves so much to fester and disturb 
the whole of this ministration. To complete this ad- 
justment, it is in every way as necessary to lay all the 
incumbent moralities on those who ask, as on those 
who confer ; and never till the whole text, which com- 
prehends the wishes of man as well at his actions, 
wield its entire authority over the^ species, will the dis- 
gusts and the prejudices, which form such a barrier 
between the ranks of human life, be effectually done 
away. It is not by the abolition of rank, but by 
assigning to each rank its duties, that peace, and friend- 
ship, and order, will at length be firmly established in 
our world. It is by the force of principle, and not by 
the force of some great political overthrow, that a con- 
summation so delightful is to be attained. We have 
no conception whatever, that, even in millennial days, 
the diversities of wealth and station will at length be 
equalised. On looking forward to the time when 
kings shall be the nursing fathers, and queens the nurs- 
ing mothers of our church, we think that we can behold 
the perspective of as varied a distribution of place and 



UiALMERS' lUSCOURSES. jjcj 

property as before. In the pilgrimage of life, there 
will still be the moving procession of the few charioted 
in splendour on the highway, and the many pacing by 
their side along the line of the same journey. There 
will, perhaps, be a somewhat more elevated footpath 
for the crowd ; and there will be an air of greater 
comfort and sufficiency amongst them ; and the re- 
spectability of evident worth and goodness will sit 
upon the countenance of this general population. 
But, bating these, we look for no great change in the 
external aspect of society. It will only be a moral 
and a spiritual change. Kings will retain their scep- 
tres, and nobles their coronets ; but, as they float in 
magnificence along, will they look with benignant 
feeling on the humble wayfarers ; and the honest sal- 
utations of regard and reverence w ill arise to them 
back again ; and, should any weary passenger be 
ready to sink unfriended on his career, will he, at one 
time, be borne onwards by his fellow^s on the path- 
way, and, at another, will a shower of beneficence be 
made to descend from the crested equipage that over- 
takes him. It is Utopianism to diiok, that, in the ages 
of our world which are yet to come, the outward dis- 
tinctions of life will not all be upholden. But it is not 
Utopianism, it is Prophecy to aver, that the breath of 
a new spirit will go abroad over the great family of 
mankind— so, that while, to the end of time, there 
shall be the high and the low in every passing genera- 
tion, will the charity of kindred feelings, and of a com- 
mon understanding, create a fellowship between them 
on their way, till they reach that heaven where human 
love shall be perfected, and all human greatness is un- 
known. 



12,0^ chalm£R3' discourses^, 

111 various places of the New Testament, do we see 
the checks of spirit and delicacy laid upon all extra- 
vagant desires. Our text, while it enjoins the perform- 
ance of good to others, up to the full measure of your de- 
sires of good from them, equally enjoins the keeping down 
of these desires to the measure of your performances. 
If Christian dispensers had only to do with Christian 
recipients, the whole work of beiievolence would be 
with ease and harmony carried on. All that was un- 
avoidable — all that came from the hand of Providence 
— all that was laid upon our suffering brethren by the 
unlooked-for visitations of accident or disease — all that 
pain and misfortune which necessarily attaches to the 
constitution of the species — all this the text most amply 
provides for ; and all this a Christian society would be 
delighted to stretch forth their means for the purpose 
of alleviating or doing away. 

We should not have dwelt so long upon this lesson, 
were it not for the essential Christian principle that is 
involved in it. The morality of the gospel is not more 
strenuous on the side of the duty of giving of this 
world's goods when it is needed, than it is against the 
desire of receiving when it is not needed. It is more 
blessed to give than to receive, and therefore less 
blessed to receive than to give. For the enforcement 
of this principle among the poorer brethren, did Paul 
give up a vast portion of his apostolical time and la- 
bour ; and that he might be an ensample to the flock 
of working with his own hands, rather than be bur- 
densome, did he set himself down to the occupation 
of a tent-maker. That lesson is surely worthy of en- 



CHALMERS' DISCOURSES. 12] 

grossing one sermon of an uninspired teacher, for the 
sake of which an inspired Apostle of the Gentiles 
engrossed as much time as would have admitted the 
preparation and the delivery of many sermons. But 
there is no more striking indication of tlie whole spirit 
and character of the gospel in this matter, than the 
example of him who is the author of it — and of whom 
we read these affecting words, that' he came into the 
world not to be ministered unto, but to minister. It is a 
righteous thing in him w^io has of this worjd^s goods, 
to minister to the necessities of others: but it is a stil! 
higlier attainment of righteousness in him who has 
nothing but the daily earnings of his daily work to 
depend upon, so to manage and to strive that he shall 
not need to be ministered unto. Christianity overlooks 
no part of human conduct ; and by providing for this 
in particular, does it, in fact, overtake, and that with 
a precept of utmost importance, the habit and condi- 
tion of a very extended class in human society. And 
never does the gospel so exhibit its adaptation to our 
species — and never does virtue stand in such charac- 
ters of strength and sacred ness before us— as when 
impregnated with the evangelical spirit, and urged by 
evangelical motives, it takes its most direct sanction 
from the life and doings of the Saviour. 

And he who feels as he ought, wili.bear with cheer- 
fulness all that the Saviour prescribes, when he thinks 
how much it is for him that the Saviour has borne. We 
speak not of his poverty all the time that he lived up- 
on earth. We speak not of those years when, a house- 
less wanderer in an unthankful world, he had not where 

to lav his head. We speak not of the mcik and un- 

18 



122 CHALMERS' DfSCGUKSliS. 

complaining suffefance with which he met the many 
ills that oppressed the tenor of his mortal existence. 
But we speak of that awful burden which crushed and 
overwhelmed its termination. We speak of that season 
of the hour and the power of darkness, when it pleased 
the Lord to bruise him, and to make his soul an offer- 
ing for sin. To estimate aright the endurance of him 
\vho himself bore our infirmities, would we ask of any 
individual to recollect some deep and awful period 
of abandonment in his own history — when thatcoim- 
tenance which at onetime beamed and brightened upon 
him from above, was mantled in thickest darkness — 
when the iron of remorse entered into his soul — and^ 
laid on a bed of torture, he was made to behold the 
evil of sin, and to taste of its bitterness. Let him look 
back, if he can, on this conflict of many agitations^ 
and then figure the whole of this mental wretchedness 
to be borne off by the ministers of vengeance into hell, 
and stretched out unto eternity. And if, on the great 
day of expiation, a full atonement was rendered, and 
all that should have fallen upon us was placed upon 
the head of the sacrifice — let him hence compute the 
weight and the awfulnessof those sorrows which were 
carried by him on whom the chastisement of our 
peace was laid, and who poured out his soul unto the 
death for us. If ever a sinner, under such a visitation^ 
shall again emerge into peace and joy in believing 
^— if he ever shall again find his way to that fountain 
which is opened in the house of Judah — if he shall 
recover once more that sunshine of ihfe soul, which, 
on the days that are past^ disclosed to him the beauties 
of holiness here, and the glories of heaven hereafter 
'-*^^f ever he «ha]| hear with effect, in this world, that 



GI1AI.MERS' DISCOURSES. 1^3 

voice from the mercy-seat, which still proclaims a 
welcome to the chief of sinners, and beckons him 
afresh to reconciliation — -O ! how gladly then should 
he bear throughout the remainder of his days, the 
whole authority of the Lord who bought him ; and 
bind for ever to his own person that yoke of the Saviour 
which is easy, and that burden which is light. 



DISCOURSE VI. 

OJN THE DTSSIPATION OF LARGE CITIES 



"^^Let no man deceive you with vain words ; for because of these things 
contieth the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience."— 
Ephes. v. 6. 

There is one obvious respect in which the stand- 
ard of morality amongst men, differs from that pure 
and universal standard which God hath set up for the 
obedience of his subjects. Men will not demand very 
urgently of each other, that, which does not very 
nearly, or very immediately, affect their own personal 
and particular interest. To the violations of justice, 
or truth, or humanity, they will be abundantly sensi- 
tive, because these offer a most visible and quickly 
felt encroachment on this interest. And thus it is, 
that the social virtues, even without any direct sanc- 
tion from God at all, will ever draw a certain portion 
of respect and reverence around them; and that a 
loud testimony of abhorrence may often be heard from 
the mouths of ungodly men, against all such vices as 
may be classed under the general designation of vices 
of dishonesty. 

Now, the same thing does not hold true of another 
class of vices, which may be termed the vices of dis- 
sipation. These do not touch, in so visible or direct 
a manner, on the security of what man possesses, and 
of what man has the greatest value fon But man is a 



CHALMERS' DISCOURSES. 125 

sehish being, and therefore it is, that the ingredient of 
selfishness gives a keenness to his estimation of the 
evil and of the enormity of the former vices, which is 
scarcely felt at all in any estimation he may form of 
the latter vices. It is very true, at the same time, that 
if one were to compute the whole amount of the mis- 
chief they bring upon society, it would be found, that 
the profligacies of mere dissipation go very far to 
break up the peace, and enjoyment, and even the re~ 
lative virtues of the world: and that, if these profli- 
gacies were reformed, it would work a mighty aug 
mentation on the temporal good both of individuals 
and famihes. But the connexion between sobriety of 
character, and the happiness of the community, is not 
so apparent, because it is more remote than the con- 
nexion which obtains between integrity of character, 
and the happiness of the community ; and man being 
not only a selfish but a shortsighted being, it follows^ 
that while the voice of execration may be distinctly 
heard against every instance of fraud or of injustice, 
instances of licentiousness may occur on every side of 
us, and be reported on the one hand with the utmost 
levity, and be listened to, on the other, with the most 
entire and complacent toleration. * 

Here, then, is a point, in which the general mor- 
ality of the world is at utter and irreconcileable vari- 
ance with the law of God. Here is a case, in which 
the voice that cometh forth from the tribunal of pub- 
lic opinion pronounces one thing, and the voice that 
cometh forth from the sanctuary of God pronounces 
another. When there is an agreement between these 
two voices, the principle on which obedience is ren- 



126 CHALMERS' DISCOURSES. 

dered to their joint and concurring authority, may be 
altogether equivocal ; and, with religious and irre- 
ligious men, you may observe an equal exhibition of 
all the equities, and all the civilities of life. But 
when there is a discrepancy between these two voices 
— or when the one attaches a criminality to certain 
habits of conduct, and is not at all seconded by the 
testimony of the other — then do we escape the confu- 
sion of mingled motives, and mingled authorities. The 
character of the two parties emerges out of the ambig- 
uity which involved it. The law of God points, it 
must be allowed, as forcible an anathema against the 
man of dishonesty, as against the man of dissipalion. 
But the chief burden of the world's anathema is laid on 
the head of the former ; and therefore it is, that, on the 
latter ground, we meet with more discriminative tests 
of principle, and gather more satisfying materials for 
the question of — who is on the side of the Lord of hosts>, 
and who is against him ? 

The passage we have now submitted to you, looks 
hard on the votaries of dissipation. It is like eternal 
truth, lifting up its own proclamation, and causing it to 
be ht ard amid the errors and the delusions of a thought- 
less world. It is like the Deity himself, looking forth, 
as he did, from a cloud, on the Egyptians of old, and 
troubling the souls of those who are lovers of pleasures, 
more than lovers of God. It is like the voice of heav- 
en, crying down the voice of human society, and send- 
ing forth a note of alarm amongst its giddy genera- 
tions. It is like the unrolHng of a portion of that 
book of higher jurisprudence, out of which we shall 
be judged on the day of our coming account, and 



CHALMERS' DISCOURSES. 127 

setting before our eyes an enactment, which, if we 
disregard it, will turn that day into the day of our 
coming condemnation. The words of man are adverted 
to in this solemn proclamation of God, against all 
unlawful and all unhallowed enjoymentSj and they are 
called words of vanity. He sets aside the authority of 
human opinion altogether ; and, on an irrevocable 
record, has he stamped such an assertion of the 
authority that belongeth to himself only, as serves to 
the end of time for an enduring memorial of his will ; 
and as commits the truth of the Lawgiver to the 
execution of a sentence of wrath against all whose 
souls are hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. There is, 
in fact, a peculiar deceitfulness in the matter before 
us ; and, in this verse, are we warned against it — 
" Let no man deceive you with vain words ; for, 
because of these things, the wrath of God cometh on 
the children of disobediencCo'' 

In the preceding verse, there is such an enumeration 
as serves to explain what the things are which are allu- 
ded to in the text ; and it is such an enumeration, you 
should remark, as goes to fasten the whole terror, and 
the whole threat, of the coming vengeance — not on the 
man who combines in his own person all the characters 
of iniquity which are specified, but on the man who 
realizes any one of these characters, ft is not, you 
will observe, the conjunction and, but the conjunction 
or, which is interposed between them. It is not as if 
we said, that the man who is dishonest, and iicentiouSj 
and covetous, and unfeeling, shall not inherit the 
kingdom of God — but the man who is either disho- 
nest, or licentious, or covetous, or unfeeling. On the 
single and exclusive possession of any one of these 



J2S CHALMERS' DISCOURSES, 

attributes, will God deal with you as with an enemy. 
The plea, that we are a little thoughtless, but we have 
a good heart, is conclusively cut asunder by this portion 
of the law and of the testimony. And in a correspond- 
ing passage, in the ninth verse of the sixth chapter of 
Paul's first episde to the Corinthians, the same peculiar- 
ity is observed in the enumeration of those who shall 
be excluded from God's favour, and have the burden 
of God's wrath laid on them through eternity. It is 
not the man who combines all the deformities of cha- 
racter which are there specified, but the man who re- 
alizes any one of the separate deformities. Some of 
them are the vices of dishonesty, others of them are 
the vices of dissipation ; and, as if aware of a deceit- 
fulness from this cause, he, after telling us that the 
unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God, bids 
us not be deceived — for that neither the licentious, 
nor the abominable, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor 
drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit 
the kingdom of God. 

He who keepeth the whole law, but offendeth in 
one point, says the Aposde James, is guilty of all. 
The truth is, that his disobedience on this one point may 
be more decisive of the state of his loyalty to God, than 
his keeping of all the rest. It may be the only point on 
which the character of his loyalty is really brought to 
the trial. All his conformities to the law of God might 
have been rendered, because they thwarted not his own 
inclination ; and, therefore, would have been render- 
ed, though there had been no law at all. The single 
infraction may have taken place in the only case where 
there was a real competition between the will of 'the 
rreature. and the will of the Creator : and the event 



CHALMi:RS' DISCOURSES. |29 

proves to which of the two the right of superiority is 
awarded. Allegiance to God in truth is but one princi- 
ple, and may be described by one short and summary 
expression ; and one act of disobedience may involve 
in it such a total surrender of the principle, as goes to 
dethrone God altogether from the supremacy which 
belongs to him. So that the account between a crea- 
ture and the Creator is not like an account made up 
of many items, where the expunging of one item would 
only make one small and fractional deduction from 
the whole sum of obedience. If you reserve but a 
single item from this account, and another makes a 
principle of completing and rendering up the whole of 
it, then your character varies from his not by a slight 
shade of difference, but stands contrasted with it in 
direct and diametric opposition. We perceive, that, 
while with him the will of God has the mastery over 
all his inclinations, with you there is, at least, one in- 
clination which has the mastery over God ; that while 
in his bosom there exists a single and subordinating 
principle of allegiance to the law, in yours there exists 
another principle, which, on the coming round of a 
lit opportunity, developes itself in an act of transgres- 
sion ; that, while with him God may be said to walk 
and to dwell in him, with you there is an evil visitant, 
who has taken up his abode in your heart, and lodges 
there either in a state of dormancy or of action, accor- 
ding to circumstances ; that, while with him the pur- 
pose is honestly proceeded on, of doing nothing which 
God disapproves, with you there is a purpose not only 
different, but opposite, of doing something which he 
disapproves. On this single difference is suspended 
not a question of degree, but a question of kind. T here 

17 



i30 CHALMERS' D1SC6UK5E:== 

are presented to us not two hues of the same colour , 
but two colours, just as broadly contrasted with each 
other as light and darkness. And such is the state of 
the alternative between a partial and an unreserved 
obedience, that while God imperatively claims the one 
as his due, he looks on the other as an. expression of 
defiance against him, and against his sovereignty. 

It is the verv same in civil ^^overnment. A man ren- 
ders himself an outcast by one act of disobedience. 
He does not need to accumulate upon himself the guilt 
of all the higher atrocities in crime, ere he forfeits his 
life to the injured laws of his country. By the perpe- 
tration of any of them is the whole vengeance of the 
state brought to bear upon his person, and sentence 
of death is pronounced on a single murder, or forgery ^^ 
or act of violent depredation. 

And let us ask you just to reflect on the tone and 
spirit of that man towards his God, who would palliate? 
for example, the vices of dissipation to which he is 
addicted, by alleging his utter exemption from the 
vices of dishonesty, to which he is not addicted. Just 
think of the real disposition and character of his souly 
who can say, '^ I will please God, but only when, in so 
doing, I also please myself; or I will do homage to 
his law, but just in those instances by which I honour 
the rights, and fulfil the expectations, of society; or I 
wdll be decided by his opinion of the right and the 
wrong, but just when the opinion of my neighbourhood 
lends its powerful and effective confirmation. But in 
other cases, when the matter is reduced to a bare 
question between man and God, when he is the single 



party I have to do with, when his will and his wrath 
are the only elements which enter into the deliberation, 
when judgment, and eternity, and the voice of him 
who speaketh from heaven are the only considerations 
at issue — then do I feel myself at greater liberty, arid 
I shall take my own way, and walk in the counsel of 
mine own heart, and after the sight of my own eyes." 
O ! be assured, that when all this is laid bareon'the dav 
of reckoning, and the discerner of the heart pronoun- 
ces upon it, and such a sentence is to be given, as will 
make k manifest to the consciences of all assembled, 
that true and righteous are the judgments of God — 
there is many a creditable man who has passed through 
the world with the plaudits and the testimonies of all 
his fellows, and without one other flaw uppn his repu- 
tation but the very slender one of certain harmless 
foibles, and certain good-humoured peculiarities, who 
when brought to the bar of account, will stand con- 
victed there of having made a divinity of his own 
will, and spent his days? in practical and habitbal 
atheism. 

And this argument is not at all affected by the actual 
state of sinfulness and infirmity into which we have 
fallen. It is true, even of saints on earth, that they 
commit sin. But to be overtaken in a fault is one 
thing; to commit that fault with the deliberate consent 
of the mind is another. There is in the bosom of 
every true Christian a strenuous principle of resistence 
to sin, and it belongs to the very essence of the prin- 
ciple that it is resistance to all sin. It admits of no 
voluntary indulgence to one sin more than to another,. 
Such an indulgence would not only change the char- 



532 CHALMERS JL>15jCO0KSES 

acterof what may be called the elementary principle 
of regeneration, but would destroy it altogether. The 
man who has entered on a course of Christian disci- 
pleship, carries on an unsparing and universal war 
with all iniquity. He has chosen Christ, for his alone 
master, and he struggles against the ascendency of 
every other. It is his sustained and habitual exertion 
in following after him to forsake all ; so that if his per- 
formance whereas complete as his endeavour, you would 
not merely see a conformity to some of the precepts, 
but a conformity to the whole law of God. At all 
events, the endeavour is an honest one, and so far suc- 
cessful, that sin has not the dominion ; and sure w^e are, 
that, in such a state of things, the vices of dissipation 
can have no existence. These vices can be more ef- 
fectually shunned, and more effectually surmounted, 
for example, than the infirmities of an unhappy temper. 
So that, if dissipation still attaches to the character, 
and appears in theconductof any individual, we know^ 
not a more decisive evidence of the state of that indi- 
vidual as being one of the many who crovyd the broad 
way thatleadeth to destruction. We look no further to 
make out our estimate of his present condition as being 
that of a rebel, and of his future prospect as being that 
of spending an eternity in hell. There is no halting be- 
tween two opinions in this matter. The man who 
enters a career of dissipation throws down the gaunt- 
liet of defiance to his God. The man who persists in 
this career keeps on the ground of hostility against 
him. 

Let us now endeavour to trace the origin, the pro- 
gress, and the effects, of a life of dissipation. 



CHALMERS' DISCOURSES. I33 

First. Then it may be said of a very great number 
of young, on their entrance into the business of the 
world, that they have not been enough fortified against 
its seducing influences by their previous education at 
home. Generally speaking, they come out from the 
habitation of their parents unarmed and unprepared 
for the contest which awaits them. If the spirit of this 
world's morality reign in their own family, then it can- 
not be, that their introduction into a more public scene 
of life will be very strictly guarded against those %dces on 
which the world placidly smiles, or at least regards with 
silent toleration. They may have been told, in early 
boyhood, of the infamy of a lie. They may have had th^J 
virtues of punctuality, and of economy, and of regulair 
attention to business, pressed upon their observation^ 
They may have heard a uniform testimony on the side of 
good behaviour, up to. the standard of such current ' 
moralities as obtain in their neighbourhood ; and this, 
we are ready to admit, may include in it a testimony 
against all such excesses of dissipation as would unfit 
them for the prosecution of this world's interests. But 
let us ask, whether there are not parents, who, after 
they have carried the work of discipline thus far, for- 
bear to carry it any farther ; who, while they would 
mourn over it as a family trial should any son of theirs 
fall a victim to excessive dissipation, yet are willing to 
tolerate the lesser degrees of it ; who, instead of decid- 
ing the question on the alternative of his heaven or his 
hell, are satisfied with such a measure of sobriety as 
will save him from ruin and disgrace in this life ; who, 
if they can only secure this, have no great objection to 
the moderate share he may take in this world's con- 
formities ; who feel, that in this matter there is a neces- 
sity and a power of example against which it is vain to 



1^4 CHALMERS^ DISCOUKSE;?, 

Struggle, and which must be acquiesced in ; who de 
ceive themselves with the fancied impossibility of stop- 
ping the evil in question — ^and say, that business must 
be gone through ; and that, in the prosecution of it, ex- 
posures must be made ; and that, for the success of if, 
a certain degree of accommodation to others must be 
observed ; and seeing that it is so mighty an object for 
one to widen the extent of his connexions, he must 
neither be very retired nor very peculiar — ^nor must 
Ms hours of companionship be too jealously watched or 
inquired into — -nor must we take him too strictly to 
task about engagements, and acquaintances, and ex- 
penditure — nor must we forget, that while sobriety has 
Its time and its season in one period of life, indulgence 
lias its season in another ; and we may fetch from the 
recollected follies of our own youth, a lesson of conni- 
vance for the present occasion ; and altogether there 
is no help for it ; and it appears to us, that absolutely 
and totally to secure him from ever entering upon 
scenes of dissipation, you must absolutely and totally 
withdraw him from the world, and surrender all his 
prospects of advancement, and give up the object of 
such a provision for our families as we feel to be a first 
and most important concern with us. 

" Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righte- 
ousness," says the Bible, " and all other things shall 
be added unto you.'' This is the promise which the 
faith of a Christian parent will rest upon ; and in the 
face of every hazard to the worldly interests of his off- 
spring, will he bring them up in the strict nurture and 
admonition of the Lord ; and he will loudly prote s 
against iniquity, in all its degrees, and in all its modi- 
fications ; and while the power of discipline remains 



CHALMERS DISCOURSES. i^^ 

with him, will it ever be exerted on the side of purcj 
fauhless, undeviating obedience ; and he will tolerate 
no exception whatever; and he will brave all that 
looks formidable in singularity, and all that looks me- 
nacing in separation from the cifstom and countenance 
of the world ; and feeling that his main concern is to 
secure for himself and for his family a place in the city 
which hath foundations, will he spurn all the maxims^ 
and all the plausibilities, of a contagious neighbour- 
hood away from him. He knows the price of his 
Christianity, and it is that he must break off conform- 
ity wdth the world — nor for any paltry advantage which 
it has to offer, will he compromise the eternity of his 
children. And let us tell the parents of another 
spirit, and another principle, that they are as 
good as incurring the guilt of a human sacrifice ; 
that they are offering up their children at the shrine of 
an idol ; that they are parties in provoking the wrath 
of God against them here ; and on the day when that 
vrrath is to be revealed, shall they hear not only the 
moanings of their despair, but the outcries of their 
bitterest execration. On that day, the glance of re- 
proach from their own neglected offspring will throw 
a deeper shade of wretchedness over the dark and 
boundless futurity that lies before them. And if, at 
the time when prophets rung the tidings of God's dis- 
pleasure against the people of Israel, it was denounced 
as the foulest of all their abominations that they caused 
their children to pass through the fire unto Moloch-— 
know ye parents, who, in placing your children on 
some road to gainful employment, have placed them 
without a sigh in the midst of depravity, so near and 
so surrounding, that, without a miracle, they must 



l^e CHALMERS' DISCOURSES. 

perish, you have done an act of idolatry to the God of 
this world ; you have commanded your household, 
after you, to worship him as the great divinity of their 
lives ; and you have caused your children to make 
their approaches unto his presence — and, in so doing, 
to pass through the fire of such temptations as have 
destroyed them. 

We do not wish to offer you an overcharged picture 
t)n this melancholy subject. What we now say is not 
applicable to all. Even in the most corrupt and 
crowded of our cities, parents are to be found, who 
nobly dare the surrender of every vain and flattering 
illusion, rather than surrender the Christianity of their 
children. And what is still more affecting, over the 
face of the country do we meet with such parents, 
who look on this world as a passage to another, and 
on all the members of their household as fellow-trav- 
ellers to eternity along with them ; and who, in this 
true spirit of believers, feel the salvation of their chil- 
dren to be, indeed, the burden of their best and dear- 
est interest; and who, by prayer, and precept, and 
example, have strenuously laboured with their souls, 
from the earliest light of their understanding ; and 
have taught them to tremble at the way of evil doers, 
and to have no fellowship with those who keep not 
the commandments of God — nor is there a day more 
sorrowful in the annals of this pious family, than when 
the course of time has brought them onwards to the 
departure of their eldest boy — and he must bid adieu 
to his native home, with all the peace, and all the 
simplicity which abound in it — and as he eyes in fan- 
-cy the distant town whither he is going, does he 



CHALMERS' DISCOURSE;:?. 137 

shnnk as Iroai the thought of an unknown wilderness 
— and it is his firm purpose to keep akjof from th^ 
dangers and the profligacies which deform it—and, 
should sinners offer to entice him, not to consent, and 
never, never, to forget the lessons of a father's vigil- 
ance, the tenderness of a mother's prayers. 

Let us now, in the next place, pass from that state 
of things which obtains among the young at their out- 
set into the world, and take a look of that state of 
things which obtains after they have got fairly intro- 
duced into it — when the children of the ungodly, and 
the children of the religious, meet on one common 
arena — when business associates them together in one 
chamber, and the omnipotence of custom lays it upon 
them all to meet together at periodic intervals, and 
join in the same parties, and the same entertainments 
— when the yearly importation of youths from the 
country falls in with that assimilating mass of corrup- 
tion which has got so firm and so rooted an establish- 
ment in the town — when the frail and unsheltered de- 
iicades of the timid boy have to stand a rude and a 
boisterous contest with the hardier depravity of those 
who have gone before him-— when ridicule, and ex- 
ample, and the vain words of a delusive sophistry, 
which palliates in his hearing the enormity of vice, are 
all brought to bear upon his scruples, and to stifle the 
remorse he might feel when he casts his principle and 
his purity away from him- — when, placed as he is in 
aland of strangers, he finds, that the tenure of ac- 
quaintanceship, with nearly all around him, is, that 
he render himself up in a conformity to their doings—- 
3Theu ft voice., like the voice of pro'ectiog friendship.. 



]33 CHALMEKS' DISCOURSBS. 

bids Ilim to the feast ; and a welcome, like the wel- 
come ofjionest kindness, hails his accession to the so- 
ciety ; and a spirit, like the spirit of exhilarating joy, 
animates the whole scene of hospitality before him ; 
and hours of rapture roll successively away on the 
wings of merriment, and jocularity, and song ; and 
after the homage of many libations has been rendered 
to honour, and fellowship, and patriotism, impurity 
is at length proclaimed in full and open cry, as one 
presiding divinity, at the board of their social enter- 
tainment. 

And now it remams to compute the general result 
of a process, which we assert of the vast majority of 
our young, on their way to manhood, that they have to 
undergo. The result is, that the vast majority are in- 
tiated into all the practices, and describe the full career 
of dissipation. Those who have imbibed from their 
fathers the spirit of this world's morality, are not sen- 
sibly arrested in this career, either by the opposition 
of their own friends, or by the voice of their own con- 
science. Those who have imbibed an opposite spirit, 
and have brought it into competition with an evil 
world, and have at length yielded, have done so, we 
may well suppose, with many a sigh, and many a 
struggle, and many a look of remembrance on those 
former years when they w^ere taught to lisp the 
prayer of infancy, and were trained in a mansion of 
piety to a reverence for God, and for all his ways: and, 
even still, will a parent's parting advice haunt his me- 
mory, and a letter from the good old man revive the 
sensibilities which at one time guarded and adorned 
him ; and. at tinted will the transient gleam of remorse 



1 



GHALMER^ i>l, SCOURS J.:.- j;^,r, 

lighten lip its agony within him ; and when he contrasts 
the profaneness and depravity of liis present compan- 
ions, with the sacredness of all he ever heard or saw 
in his father's dwelling, it will almost feel as if con- 
science were again to resume her power, and the re- 
visiting spirit of God to call him back again from the 
paths of wickedness ; and on his restless bed will the 
images of guilt conspire to disturb him, and the terrors 
of punishment ofi'er to scare him away ; and many will 
be the drearv and dissatisfied intervals when he shall 
be forced to acknowledge, that, in bartering his soul 
for the pleasures of sin, he has bartered the peace and* 
enjoyment of the world along with it. But, alas! the 
entanglements of companionship have got hold of 
him; and the inveteracy of habit tyrannizes over all 
his purposes ; and the stated opportunity again comes 
round ; and the loud laugh of his partners in guilt 
chases, for another season all his despondency away 
from him ; and the infatuation gathers upon him every 
month ; and a hardening process goes on within his 
heart; and the deceitfalness of sin grows apace ; and 
he at length becomes one of the sturdiest rind most 
unrelenting of her votaries; and he, in his turn, 
strengthens the conspiracy that is formed against tlie 
morals of a new generation ; and all the ingenuous 
delicacies of other days are obliterated ; and he con- 
tracts a temperament of knowing, hackneyed, mifeel- 
ing depravity: and thus the mischief is transmitted 
from one year to another, and keeps up the guihy his- 
tory of every place of crowded population. 

And let us here speak one word to those seniors in 
depravity — those men who give to the corruption of 



110 CHALMERi>' DISCOURSES. 

acquaintances, who are younger than themselvC'S, their 
countenance their agency ; and who can initiate 
them without a sigh in the mysteries of guilt, and care 
not though a parent's hope should wither and expire 
under the contagion of their ruffian example. It is only 
upon their own conversion that we can speak to them 
the pardon of the gospel. It is only if they themselves 
are washed, and sanctified, and justified, that we can 
warrant their personal deliverance from the wrath that 
is to come. But under all the concealment which rests 
on the futurities of God's administration, we know, 
that there are degrees of suffering in hell— and that 
while some are beaten with few stripes, others are beat- 
en with many. And surely, if they who turn many to 
righteousness shall shine as the stars for ever and ever, 
we may be well assured, that they who patronise the 
cause of iniquity—they who can beckon others to that 
way \yhich leadeth on to the chambers of death— they 
who can aid and witness, writhout a sigh, the extinction 
of youthful modesty— surely, it may well be said of 
such, that on them a darker frown will fall from the 
judgment-seat, and through eternity will thev have to 
hear the pains of a fiercer indignation. 

Having thus looked to the commencernent of a 
course of dissipation, and to its progress, let us now, in 
the third place, look to its usual termination. We 
speak not, at present of the coming death, and of the 
coming judgi>ient, but of the change which takes place 
on many a votary of licentiousness, when he becomes 
what the world calls a reformed man ; and puts on the 
decencies of a sober and domestic establishment; and 
Mds adieu to the pursuits and the profligacies of youth. 



CHALMERS' DISCOURSES. }41 

not because he has repented of them, but because he 
has outlived them. You all perceive how this may 
be done without one movement of the heart, or of 
the understanding, towards God — that it is done 
by many, though duty to him be not in all their 
thoughts— that the change, in this case, is not from 
the idol of pleasure unto God, but only from one 
idol to another — and that, after the whole of this boast- 
ed transformation, we mav still behold the same bodv 
of sin and of death, and only a new complexion thrown 
over it. There, may be the putting on of sobriety, but 
there is no putting on of godliness. It is a common 
and an easy transition to pass from one kind of diso- 
bedience to another, but it is not so easy to give up 
that rebelliousness of the heart which lies at the root 
of alLdisobedience. It may be easy, after the wonted 
course of dissipation is ended, to hold out another as- 
pect altogether in the eye of acquaintances ; but it is 
not so easy to recover that shock, and that overthrow, 
which the religious principle sustains, when a man first 
enters the world, and surrenders himself to the power 
of its enticements. Such were some of you, says the 
Apostle, but ye are washed, and sanctified, and justi- 
fied. Our reformed man knows not the meaning of 
such a process ; and, most assuredly, has not at all 
realised it in the history of his own person. We will 
not say what new object he is running after. It may 
be wealth, or ambition, or philosophy ; but it is nothing 
connected with the interest of his soul. It bears no 
reference whatever to the concerns of that great rela- 
tionship which obtains between the creature and the 
Creator. The man has withdrawn, and perhaps for 
ever, from the scenes of dissipation, and has betaken 



142 CHALMERb' DISCOURSES 

himself to another way — but still it is his own way. 
It is not the will or the way of God that he is yet car- 
ing for. Such a man may bid adieu to profligacy in 
his own person. But he lifts up the light of his coun- 
tenance on the profligacy of others. He gives it the 
w^hole weight and authority of his connivance. He 
wields, we will say it, such an instrumentality of se- 
duction over the young, as, though not so alarming, 
is far more dangerous than the undisguised attempts 
of those who are the immediate agents of corruption. 
The formal and deUberate conspiracy of those who 
club together, at stated terms of companionship, may 
be all seen, and watched, and guarded against. But 
how shall we pursue this conspiracy into its other 
ramifications ? How shall we be able to neutralize 
that insinuating poison which distils from the lips of 
grave and respectable citizens ? How shall we be 
able to dissipate that gloss which is thrown by the 
smile of elders and superiors over the sins of forbidden 
indulgence ? How can we disarm the bewitching so- 
phistry which lies in all these evident tokens of com- 
placency, on the part of advanced and reputable men ? 
How is it possible to tract the progress of this sore evil, 
throughout all the business and intercourse of society ? 
How can we stem the influence of evil communica- 
tions, when the friend, and the patron, and the man 
who has cheered and signalised us by his polite invita- 
tions, turns his own family-table into a nursery of li- 
centiousness ? How can we but despair of ever witness- 
ing on earth a pure and a holy generation, when even 
parents will utter their polluting levities in the hearing 
of their own children ; and vice, and humour, and 
gaiety, are all indiscriminatelv blended into one conver- 



CHALMERS' DISCOURSES. 14iJ 

sation ; and a loud laugh, from the initiated and the 
uninitiated in profligacy, is ever ready to flatter and 
to regale the man who can thus prostitute his powers 
of entertainment ? O ! for an arm of strength to de- 
molish this firm and far spread compact of iniquity ; 
and for the power of some such piercing and prophetic 
voice, as might convince our reformed men of the 
baleful influence they cast behind them on the morals 
of the succeeding generation. 

We, at the same time, have our eye perfectly open 
to that great external improvement which has taken 
place, of late years, in the manners of society. There 
is not the same grossness of conversation. There is 
not the same impatience for the withdrawment of him, 
who, asked to grace the outset of an assembled party, 
is compelled, at a certain step in the process of convivi- 
ality, by the obligations of professional decency, to 
retire from it. There is not so frequent an exaction of 
this as one of the established proprieties of social or of 
fashionable life. And if such an exaction was ev^r 
laid by the omnipotence of custom on a minister of 
Christianity, it is such an exaction as ought never, 
never, to be complied with. It is not for him to lend 
the sanction of his presence to a meeting with which 
he could not sit to its final termination. It is not for 
him to stand associated, fot* a single hour, with an 
assemblage of men who begin with hypocrisy, and end 
with downright blackguardism. It is not for him to 
watch the progress of the coming ribaldry, and to hit 
the well selected moment when talk, and turbulence, 
and boisterous merriment, are on the eve of burstine: 
forth upon the company, and carrving them forward 



i44 CHALMKKS' DISCOURSES. 

to the full acme and uproar of their enjoyment. It is 
quite in vain to say, that he has only sanctified one 
part of such an entertainment. He has as good as 
given his connivance to the whole of it, and left behind 
him a discharge in full of all its abominations ; and, 
therefore, be they who they may, whether they rank 
among the proudest aristocracy of our land, or are 
charioted in splendour along, as the wealthiest of the 
citizens, it is his part to keep as purely and indignantly 
'aloof from such society as this, as he would from the 
vilest and most debasing associations of profligacy. 

And now the important question comes to be put ; 
what is the likeliest way of setting up a barrier against 
this desolating torrent of corruption, into which there 
enter so many elements of power and strength, that, 
to the general eye, it looks altogether irresistible ? It 
is easier to give a negative, than an affirmative answer 
to this question. And, therefore it shall be our first 
remark, that the mischief never will be effectually 
combated by any expedient separate from the growth 
and the transmission of personal Christianity through- 
out the land. If no addition be made to the stock of 
religious principle in a country, then the profligacy 
of a country will make its obstinate stand against 
all the mechanism of the most skilful, and plausible^ 
and well looking contrivtmces. It must not be dis- 
guised from you, that it does not lie within the com- 
pass either of prisons or penitentiaries to work any 
sensible abatement on the wickedness of our ex- 
isting generation. The operation must be of a pre- 
ventive, rather than of a corrective tendency. It must 
be brou2:ht to beau upon boyhood : and be kept up 



CHALMERS' DISCOURSES }45 

through that whole period of random exposures through 
which it has to run, on its way to an established con- 
dition in society ; and a high tone of moral purity 
must be infused into the bosom of many individuals ; 
and their agency will effect through the channels of 
family and social connexion, what never can be effected 
by any framework of artificial regulations, so long as 
the spirit and character of society remain what they 
are. In other words, the progress of reformation will 
never be sensibly carried forv^^ard beyond the pro- 
gress of personal Christianity in the world; and 
therefore, the question resolves itself Into the like- 
liest method of adding to the number of Christian 
parents who may fortify the principles of their chil- 
dren at their first outset in life — of adding to the 
number of Christian young men, who might nobly 
dare to be singular, and to perform the angelic office 
of guardians and advisers to those who are younger 
than themselves — of adding to the number of Chris- 
tians in middle and advanced fife, who might, as far 
as in them lies, alter the general feeling and counte- 
nance of society ; and blunt the force of that tacit but 
most seductive testimony, which has done so much to 
throw a palliative veil over the guilt of a life of dissi- 
pation. 

Such a question cannot be entered upon, at present^ 
in all its bearings, and in all its generality. And we 
must, therefore, simply satisfy ourselves with the object 
that as we have attempted already to reproach the in- 
difference of parents, and to reproach the unfeeling 
depravity of those young men who scatter their pesti- 
lential levities around the whole circle of their compan- 

19 



J 46 CHALMERS' DISCOURSES 

ionship, we may now shortly attempt to lay upon the 
men of middle and advanced life, in general society, 
their share of responsibility for the morals of the rising 
generation. For the promotion of this great cause, it 
is not at all necessary to school them into any nice or 
exquisite contrivances. Could we only give them a 
desire towards it, and a sense of obligation, they would 
soon find their own way to the right exercise of their 
own influence in forwarding the interests of purity and 
virtue among the young. Could we only affect their 
consciences on this point, there would be almost no 
necessity whatever to guide or enlighten their under- 
standing. Could we only get them to be Christians, 
and to carry their Christianity into their business, they 
would then feel themselves invested with a guardian- 
ship ; and that time, and pains, and attention, onght to 
be given to the fiilfilment of its concerns. It is quite in 
vain to ask, as if there was any mystery, or any help- 
lessness about it, " What can they do ?" For, is it not 
the fact most palpably obvious, that much can be done 
even by the mere power of example ? Or might not 
the master of any trading establishment send the per- 
vading influence of his own principles among some, 
at least, of the servants and auxiliaries who belong to 
it ? Or can he, in no degree whatever, so select those 
who are admitted, as to ward off much contamination 
from the branches of his employ ? Or might not he 
so deal out his encouragement to the deserving, as to 
confirm them in all their purposes of sobriety ? Or 
might not he interpose the shield of his countenance and 
his testimony between a struggling youth and the ridicule 
his acquaintances ? Or, by the friendly conversation of 
half an hour J mi^ht not he strenatheii within hini evcrr 



CHALMERS' DISCOURSES. j47 

principle of virtuous resistance ? By these, and by a 
thousand other expedients^ which will readily suggest 
themselves to him who has the good will, might not a 
healing water be sent forth through the most corrupted 
of all our establishments ; and it be made safe for the 
unguarded young to officiate in its chambers ; and it 
be made possible to enter upon the business of the 
world without entering on such a scene of temptation, 
as to render almost inevitable the vice of the world, 
and its impiety, and its final and everlasting condem- 
nation? Would Christians only be open and intrepid, 
and carry their religion into their merchandise ; and 
furnish us with a single hundred of such houses in 
this city, where the care and character of the master 
formed a guarantee for the sobriety of all his depend^ 
entSjit would be like the clearing out of a piece of culti^ 
vated ground in the midst of a frightful wilderness; 
and parents would know whither they could repair 
with confidence for the settlement of their offspring ; 
and we should behold, what is nnghtily to be desired, 
a line of broad and visible demarcation between the 
ehurch and the world; and an interest so precious as 
the immortality of children, would no longer be left 
to the play of such fortuitous elements, as operated at 
random throughout the confused mass of a mingled 
and indiscriminate society. And thus, the pieties of a 
father's house might bear to be transplanted even into 
the scenes of ordinary business : and instead of with- 
ering, as they do at present, under a contagion which 
spreads in every direction, and fills up the whole face 
of the community, they might flourish in that moral 
region which was occupied by a peculiar people, and 
which they had reclaimed from a world that lieth in 
wickedness- 



DlSeOURSE VII. 

A)N THE VITIATING INFLUENCE OF THE HIGHER UPON THE 
LOWER OliDERS OF SOCIETY. 



"Then said he unto the disciples, It is .impossible but that offences wiU 
come: but wo unto him through whom they come! It were bet- 
ter for hira that a millstone were hanged a])Out his neck, and he cast 
into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones;"— 
Luke xvii. 1, 2. 

To offend an other, according to the common ac- 
ceptation of the words, is to displease him. Now, 
this is not its acceptation in the verse before us, nor in 
several other verses of the New Testament. It were 
coming nearer to the scriptural meaning of the term, 
had we, instead of offence and offending, adopted the 
terms, scandal and scandalizing. But the full signif- 
ication of the phrase, to offend another, is to cause 
him to fall from the faith and obedience of the gospel. 
It may be such a faUing away as that a man recovers 
himself — like the disciples, who were all offended in 
Christ, and forsook him ; and, after a season of sep- 
aration, were at length re-established in their disci- 
pleship. Or it may be such a falling away as that 
there is no recovery — hke those in the gospel of John, 
who, offended by the sayings of our Saviour, went 
back, and walked no more with him. If you put 
such a stumbling-block in the way of a neighbour, 
who is walking on a course of christian discipleship, 
as to make him fall, you offend him. It is in this 



cnAJ.MERS' DISCOURSES. 149 

sense that our Saviour uses the word, when he speaks 
of your own right hand, or your own right eye, of- 
fending you. They may do so, by giving you an oc- 
casion to fall. And what is here translated offend, 
is, in the first epistle to the Corinthians, translated to 
make to offend ; where Paul says, "• If meat make my 
brother to offend, I will eat no more flesh while the 
world standeth, lest I make mv brother to offend." 

The little ones to whom our S^aviour alludes, in this 
passage, he elsewhere more fully particularises, by 
telling us, that they are those who believe in him. 
There is no call here for entering into any contro- 
versy about the doctrine of perseveTance. It is not 
necessary, either for the purpose of explaining, or 
of giving force to the practical lesson of the text now 
submitted to you. We happen to be as much satisfied 
with the doctrine, that he who hath a real faith in the 
gospel of Christ will never fail away, as we are satis- 
fied with the truth of any identical proposition. If a 
professing disciple do, in fact, fall away, this is a 
phenonienon which might be traced to an essential de- 
fect of principle at the first ; which proves, in fact, that 
he made the mistake of one principle for another ; and 
that, while he thought he had the faith, it was not 
that very faith of the New Testament which is unto 
salvation. There might have been the semblance of 
a work of grace, without its reality. Such a work,, 
if genuinely begun, will be carried onwards even un- 
to perfection. But this is a point on which it is not at 
all necessary, at present to dogmatize. We are led, by 
the text, to expatiate on the guilt of that one man who 
has wrecked the interest of another man's eternity. 



1^0 CHALMERS' DISCOUKbES. 

Now, it may be very true, that if the second has ac- 
tually entered within the strait gale, it is not in the 
power of the first, with all his artifices, and all his tempta- 
tions, to draw him out again. .But instead of having en- 
tered the gate, he may only be on the road that leads to it ; 
and it is enough, amid the uncertainties wliich, in this 
life, hang over the question of — who are really believers, 
and who are not ? that it is not known in which of 
these two conditions the little one is ; and that, there- 
fore, to seduce him from obedience to the will of 
Christ, may, in fact, be to arrest his progress towards 
Christ, and to draw him back unto the perdition of his 
soul. The whole guilt of the text may be realised by 
him who keeps back another from the church, where 
he might have heard, and heard with acceptance, 
that word of life which he has not yet accepted ; or by 
him, whose influence or whose example detains, in 
the entanglement of any one sin, the acquaintance 
who is meditating an outset on the path of decided 
Christianity— seeing, that every such outset will land 
in disappointment those who, in the act of following 
after Christ, do not forsake all ; or by him who tam- 
pers with the conscience of an apparently zealous and 
confirmed disciple, so as to seduce him into some ha- 
bitual sin, either of neglect or of performance— seeing, 
that the individual who but for this seduction might 
have cleaved fully unto the Lord, and turned out a 
prosperous and decided Christian, has been led to put 
a good conscience away from him — and so, by ma- 
king shipwhreck of his faith, has proved to the world, 
that it was not the faith which could obtain the vic- 
tory. It is true, that it is not possible to seduce the 
elect. But even this suggestion, perverse and unjust 



CHALiMERS' DISCOURSES. 15 1 

as it would be in its application, is not generally pre- 
sent to the mind of him who is guilty of the attempt 
to seduce, or of the act which carries a seducing influ- 
ence along with it. The guilt with which he is 
chargeable, is that of an indifference to the spiritual 
and everlasting fate of others. He is wilfully the oc^ 
casion of causing those who are the little ones, or, for 
any thing he knows, might have been the little ones of 
Christ, to fall ; and it is against him that our Saviour, 
in the text, lifts not a cool but an impkssioned testi- 
mony. It is of him that he utters one of the most se- 
vere and solemn denunciations of the. gospel. 

If this text were thoroughly pursued into its manifold 
applications, it would be found to lay a weight of 
fearful responsibility upon us all. We are here called 
upon not to work out our own salvation, but to com- 
pute the reflex influence of all our works, and of all our 
ways, on the principles of others. And when one 
thinks of the mischief which this influence might spread 
around it, even from Christians of chiefest reputation ; 
when one thinks of the readiness of man to take shelter 
in the example of an acknowledged superior ; when 
one thinks that some inconsistency of ours might 
seduce another into such an imitation as overbears the 
reproaches of his own conscience, and as, by vitiating 
the singleness of his eye, makes the whole of his body, 
instead of being full of light, to be full of darkness ; 
when one takes the lesson along with him into the 
various conditions ofhfe he may be called by Providence 
to occupy, and thinks, that if, either as a parent 
surrounded by his family, or as a master by the mem- 
bars of his establishment, or as a citizen by the many 



252 CHALMERS' DISCOURSES. 

observers of his neighbourhood around him, he shall 
either speak such words, or do such actions, or adminis- 
ter his affairs hi such a way as is unvvorthy of his high 
and immortal destination, that then a taint of corruption 
is sure to descend from. such an exliibition, upon the 
immortals who are on every side of him ; when one 
thinks of himself as the source and the centre of a 
contagion which might bring a blight upon the graces 
and the prospects of other souls besides his own — surely 
this is enough to supply him with a reason w^hy, in 
working out his own personal salvation, he should do 
it with fear, and with watchfulness, and with much 
trembling. 

But we are now upon the ground of a higher and 
more dehcate conscientiousness, than is generally to be 
met w ith. Whereas, our object, at present, is to expose 
certain of the grosser ofifenres which abound in socie- 
ty, and which spread a most dangerous and ensnaring 
influence among the individuals who compose it. To 
this we have been insensibly led, by the topics of that 
discourse which we addressed to you on a former 
occasion ; and when it fell in our way to animadvert 
on the magnitude of that man's guilt, who, either by 
his example, or his connivance, or his direct and formal 
tuition, can speed the entrance of the yet unpractised 
young on a career of dissipation. And whether he be 
a parent, who, trenched in this world's maxims, can^ 
without a struggle, and without a sigh, leave his help- 
less offspring to take their random and unprotected 
way through this world's conformities ; or whether he 
be one of those seniors in depravity, who can cheer on 
bis more youthful companion to a surrender of all those 



CHALMERS' DISCOURSES, ]3,3 

scruples, and all those delicacies, which have hitherto 
adorned him ; or whether he be a more aged citizen, 
who, having run the wonted course of intemperance, 
can cast an approving eye on the corruption through- 
t>ut all its stages, and give a tenfold force to all its 
allurements, by setting up the authority of grave and 
reformed manhood upon its side ; in each of these 
characters do we see an offence that is pregnant with 
deadliest mischief to the priaciples oi the rising genera- 
tion : and while we are told by our text, that, for such 
offences, there exists some deep and mysterious necessity 
— insomuch, that it is impossible but that offences must 
come — ^yet let us not forget to urge on every one sharer 
in this work of moral contamination, that never does 
the meek and gentle Saviour speak in terms more threat- 
ening, or more reproachful, than when he speaks of the 
enormity of such misconduct. There cannot, in truth, 
be a grosser outrage committed on the order of God's 
administration, than that which he is in the habit of 
inflicting. There cannot, surely, be a directer act of 
rebellion, than that which multiplies the adherents of 
its own cause, and which swells the hosts of the rebel- 
lious. There cannot be made to rest a feller condemna- 
tion on the head of iniquity, than that which is sealed 
by the blood of its own victims, and its own proselytes. 
Nor should we wonder when that is said of such an 
agent for iniquity which is said of tb^ betrayer of our 
Lord. It were better for him that he had not been 
born. It were better for him, now that he is born, 
could he be committed back again to deep annihilation. 
Rather than that he should offend one of these little 
ones, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged 

about his neck, and he were cast into the sea 

20 



154 CHALMERS' DISCOURSES. 

This is one case of such offences as are adverted to 
in the text. Another and still more specific is begin- 
ning, we understand, to be exemplified in our own 
city, though it has not attained to the height or to the 
frequency at which it occurs in a neighbouring metro- 
polis. We allude to the doing of week-day business 
upon the Sabbath. We allude to that violence which 
is rudely offered to the feelings and the associations of 
sacredness, by those exactions that an ungodly master 
lays at times on his youthful dependents — when those 
hours which they wont to spend in church, they are 
called upon to spend in the counting-house — when 
that day, which ought to be a day of piety, is turned 
into a day of posting and of penmanship — when the 
rules of the decalogue are set aside, and utterly super- 
seded by the rules of the great trading establishment ; 
and every thing is made to give way to the hurrying 
emergency of orders, and clearances, and the demands 
of instant correspondence. Such is the magnitude of 
this stumbling-block, that many is the young man who 
has here fallen to rise no more — that, at this point of 
departure, he has so widened his distance from God, 
as never, in fact, to return to him — that, in this dis- 
tressing contest between principle and necessity, the 
final blow has been given to his religious principles — 
that the master whom he serves, and under whom he 
earns his provision for time, has here wrested the 
whole interest of his eternity away from him — that, 
from this moment, there gathers upon his soul the 
complexion of a hardier and more determined impiety 
— and conscience once stifled now speaks to him with 
a feebler voice — and the world obtains a firmer lodge- 
ment in his heart — and, renouncing all his original 



CHALMERS' DISCOURSES. 15^ 

tenderness about Sabbath, and Sabbath employments, 
he can now, with the thorough unconcern of a fixed 
and familiarised proselyte, keep equal pace by his 
fellows throughout every scene of profanation — and he 
who wont to tremble and recoil from the freedoms of 
irreligion with the sensibility of a little one, may soon 
become the most daringly rebellious of them all — and 
that Sabbath which he has now learned, at one time, 
to give to business, he, at another, gives to unhallowed 
enjoyments — and it is turned into a day of visits and 
excursions, given up to pleasure, and enlivened by all 
the mirth and extravaganceof holiday— and, when sa- 
crament is proclaimed from the city pulpits, he, the apt, 
the well trained disciple of his corrupt and corrupting 
superior, is the readiest to plan the amusements of the 
coming opportunity, and among the very foremost in 
the ranks of emigration — >and though h^ may look 
back, at times, to the Sabbath of his father's pious 
house, yet the retrospect is always becoming dimmer, 
and at length it ceases to disturb him — and thus the 
alienation widens every year, till, wholly given over to 
impiety, he lives without God in the world. 

And were we asked to state the dimensions of that 
iniquity which stalks regardlessly, and at large, over 
the ruin of youthful principles — were we asked to find 
a place in the catalogue of guilt for a crime, the atrocity 
of which is only equalled, we understand, by its fre- 
quency—were we called to characterise the man who, 
so far from attempting one counteracting influence 
against the profligacy of his dependents, issues, from 
the chair of authority on which he sits, a command- 
ment, in the direct face of a commandment (mm God 



I5(y CHALMEflS' DISCOl^RSKS. 

■ — the man who has chartered impiety in articles of 
agreement, and has vested himself with a property in 
that time which only belongs to the Lord of the Sab- 
bath — were we asked to look to the man who could 
thus overbear the last remnants of remorse in a strug- 
gling and unpractised bosom, and glitter in all the en- 
signs of a prosperity that is reared on the violated con- 
sciences of those who are beneath him — O ! were the 
question put, to whom shall we liken such a man ? or 
w^hat is the likeness to which we can compare him ? 
we would say, that the guilt of him who trafficked on 
the highway, or trafficked on that outraged coast, from 
whose weeping families children were inseparably 
torn, was far outmeasured by the guilt which could 
thus frustrate a father's fondest prayers, and trample 
under foot the hopes and the preparations of eternity* 

There is another way whereby in the employ of a 
careless and unprincipled master, it is impossible but 
that offences must come. You know just as well as 
we do, that there are chicaneries in business ; and, so 
Jong as we forbear stating the precise extent of them, 
there is not an individual among you who has a title to 
construe the assertion into an affi'onting charge of 
criminality against himself But you surely know as 
well as we, that the mercantile profession, conducted, 
as it often is, with the purest integrity, and laying no 
resistless necessity whatever for the surrender of prin- 
ciple on any of its members; and dignified by some 
of the noblest exhibitions of untainted honour, and 
devoted friendship, and magnificent generosity, that 
have ever been recorded of our nature ; — ^you know 
as well as we, that it was utterly extravagant, and in 



CHALMERS' DISCOURSES. 15-7 

the face of all observation, to affirm,, that each, and 
every one of its numerous competitors, stood clearly 
and totally exempted from the sins of an undue sel- 
fishness. And, accordingly, there are certain commo- 
dious falsehoods occasionally practised in this depart- 
ment of human affairs. There are, for example, 
certain dexterous and gf^inful evasions, whereby the 
payers of tribute are enabled, at times, to make their 
escape from the eagle eye of the exactors of tribute. 
There are even certain contests of ingenuity between 
individual traders, where in the higgling of a very 
keen and anxious negociation, each of them is tempted 
in talking of offers and prices, and the reports of fiue- 
tuations in home and foreign markets, to say the things 
which are not. You must assuredly know, that these, and 
such as these, then, have introduced a certain quantity 
of what may be called shuffling, into the communica- 
tions of the trading world — insomuch, that the simplicity 
of yea, yea, and nay, nay, is in some degree exploded ; 
and there is a kind of understood toleration establish- 
ed for certain modes of expression, which could not, 
we are much afraid, stand the rigid scrutiny of the 
great day ; and there is an abatement of confidence 
between man and man, implying, we doubt, such a 
proportionate abatement of truth, as goes to extend 
most fearfully the condemnation that is due to all liars, 
who shall have their part in the lake that burneth 
wdth fire and brimstone. And who can compute the 
effect of all this on the young and yet unpractised ob- 
server? Who does not see, that it must go to reduce 
the tone of his principles; and to involve him in many 
a delicate struggle between the morality he has learned 
from his catechism, and the moralitv he sees in the 



158 CHALMERS' DISCOURSES. 

counting-house;, and to obliterate, in his mind, the 
distinctions between right and wrong ; and, at length, 
to reconcile his conscience to a sin which, hke every 
other, deserves the wrath and the curse of God; and 
to make him tamper witli a direct commandment, in 
such a w^ay, as that falsehoods and frauds might be 
nothing more in his estimation, than the peccadilloes of 
an innocent compliance with the current practices and 
moralities (tf the world ? Here then is a point, at which 
the way of those who conform to this world, diverges 
from the way of those peculiar people who are redeemed 
from all iniquity, and are thoroughly furnished unto all 
good works. Here is a grievous occasion to fall. Here 
is a competition between the service of God and the 
service of Mammon. Here is the exhibition of ano- 
ther offence, and the bringing forward of another 
temptation, to those who are entering on the business 
of the world, little adverted to, we fear, by those who 
live in utter carelessness of their own souls, and never 
spend a thought or a sigh about the immortality of 
others — but most distinctly singled out by the text as a 
crime of foremost magnitude in the eye of Him who 
judgeth righteously. 

And before we quit the subject of such offences as 
take place in ordinary trade, let us just advert to one 
example of it — not so much for the frequency of its 
occurrence, as for the way that it stands connected 
in principle with a very general, and, we believe, a 
very mischievous offence, that takes place in domestic 
society. It is neither, you will observe, the avarice 
nor the selfishness of our nature, which forms the on- 
ly obstruction in the way of one man dealing plainly 



CHALMERS DISCOURSES. 



159 



With another. There is another obstruction, founded 
on a far more pleasing and amiable principle — even 
on that delicacy of feeling, in virtue of which, one 
man cannot bear to wound or to mortify another. It 
would require, for instance, a very rare, and, certainly, 
not a very enviable degree of hardihood, to tell anoth- 
er, without pain, that you did not think him w orthy 
of being trusted. And yet, in the doings of merchan- 
dise, this is the very trial of delicacy which sometimes 
offers itself. The man with whom you stand commit- 
ted to as great an extent as you count to be advisea- 
ble, would like, perhaps, to try your confidence in 
him, and his own credit with you, a little farther ; and 
he comes back upon }0u with a fresh order; and you 
secretly have no desire to link any more of your prop- 
erty with his speculation * and the difficulty is how to 
get the application in question disposed of; aad you 
feel that by far the pleasantest way, to all the parties 
concerned, would be, to make him believe that you 
refuse the application not because you will not com- 
ply, but because you cannot — for that you have no 
more of the article he wants from you upon hand. 
And it would only be putting your ow^n soul to haz- 
ard, did you personally and by yourself make this 
communication: but you select, perhaps, as the organ 
of it some agent or underling of your establishment, 
who knows it to be false ; and to avoid the soreness 
of a personal encounter with the man whom you are 
to disappoint, you devolve the whole business of this 
lying apology upon others; and thus do you continue 
to shift this oppressive burden away from you — or, in 
other words, to save your own delicacy, you count 
not, and you care not, about another's damnation. 



160 CHALMERS* DISCOURSES. 

Now, what we call uponyou to mark, is the perfect 
identity of principle between this case of making a 
brother to offend, and another case which obtains, we 
have heard, to a very great extent among the most 
genteel and opulent of our city families. In this case, 
you put a lie into the mouth of a dependent, and that, 
for the purpose of protecting your substance from such 
an application as might expose it to hazard or dimin- 
ution. In the second case, you put a lie into the 
mouthof a dependent, and that, for the purpose of 
protecting your time from such an encroachment as 
you would not feel to be convenient or agreeable. 
And, in both cases, you are led to hold out this offence 
by a certain delicacy of temperament, in virtue of 
which, you can neither give a man plainly to under- 
stand, that you are not willing to trust him, nor can you 
give him to understand that you count his company 
to be an interruption. But, in both the one and the 
other example, look to the Httle account that is made 
of a brother's or of a sister's eternity ; behold the 
guilty task that is thus unmercifully laid upon one 
who is shortly to appear before the judgment-seat of 
Christ; thmk of the entanglement which is thus made 
to beset the path of a crt^ature who is unperishaBle. 
Thafj at the shrine of Mammon, such a bloody sacri- 
fice should be rendered by some of his unrelenting vo- 
taries, is not to be wondered at ; but that the shrine of 
elegarce and fashion should be bathed in blood — that 
spit ad sentimental ladyship should put forth her 
hand to such an enormity — that she who can sigh so 
gently, and shed her graceful tear over the sufferings 
of others, should thus be accessary to the second and 
more awful death of her own domestics — that one 



gilALMERS' DISCOURSES. lt)l 

who looks the mildest and the loveliest of human be- 
ings, should exact obedience to a mandate which car- 
ries wrath, and tribulation, and anguish, in its train 
— O! how it should confirm every Christian in his 
defiance to the authority of fashion, and lead him to 
^purn at all its folly, and at ail its worthlessness. 

x4nd it is quite in vain to say, that the servant whom 
you thus employ as the deputy of your falsehood, can 
possibly execute the commission without the conscience 
being at all tainted or defiled by it ; that a simple cot- 
tage maid can so sophisticate the matter, as, without 
any violence to her original principles, to utter the 
language of what she assuredly knows to be a down- 
right lie ; that she, humble and untutored soul, can 
sustain no injury when thus made to tamper with the 
plain English of these realms ; that she can at all sat- 
isfy herself, how, by the prescribed utterance of " not 
at home," she is not pronouncing such words as are 
substantially untrue, but merely using them in another 
and perfectly understood meaning — and which, ac- 
cording to their modern translation, denote, that the 
person of whom she is thus speaking, instead of being 
away from home, is secretly lurking in one of the most 
secure and intimate of its receptacles. You may try 
to darken and transform this piece of casuistry as you 
will ; and work up your own minds into the peacea- 
ble conviction that it is all right, and as it should be. 
But be very certain, that where the moral sense of 
vour domestic is not already overthrown, there is, at 
least, one bosom within which you have raised a war 
of doubts and of difficuhies; and where, if the victory 

be on vour side, it will be on tlie side of him. who is 

Qi 



1(52 CHALMERS' DISCOURSES. 

the great enemy of righteousness. There is, at leasts 
one person along the line of this conveyance of deceit, 
who condemneth herself in that which she alloweth ; 
who, in the language of Paul, esteeming the practice 
to be unclean, to her will it be unclean; who will 
perform her task with the offence of her own eon- 
science, and to whom, therefore, it will indeed be 
evil : who cannot render obedience in this matter to 
her earthly superior, but by an act, in which she does 
not stand clear and unconscious of guilt before God ; 
and with whom, therefore, the sad consequence of 
what we can call nothing else than a barbarous combi- 
nation against the principles and the prospects of the 
lower orders, is — that as she has not cleaved fully 
unto the Lord, and has not kept by the service of the 
one master, and has not forsaken all at His bidding, 
she cannot be the disciple of Christ, 

The aphorism, that he who offend eth in one point is 
guilty of all, tells us something more than of the way 
in which God adjudges condemnation to the disobe- 
dient. It also tells us of the way in which one 
individual act of sinfulness operates upon our moral 
nature. It is altogether an erroneous view of the 
commandments, to look upon them as so many ob- 
servances to which we are bound by as many distinct 
and independent ties of obligation — insomuch, that the 
transgression of one of them may be brought about by 
the dissolution of one separate tie, and may leave all 
the others with as entire a constraining influence and 
authority as before. The truth is, that the command- 
ments ought rather to be looked upon as branching out 
^rom one great and general tie of obligation ; and that 



QHALMEllS DISCOUn3E3. ltJ:S 

there is no such thing as loosening the hold of one of 
them upon the conscience, but by the unfastening of 
that tie which binds them all upon the conscience. 
So that if one member in the system of practical 
righteousness be made to suffer, all the other members 
suffer along with ; and if one decision of the moral 
sense be thwarted, the organ of the moral sense is 
permanently impaired, and a leaven of iniquity infused 
into all its other decisions ; and if one suggestion of 
this inward monitor be stifled, a general shock is given 
to his authority over the whole man ; and if one of the 
least commandments of the law is left unfulfilled, the 
law itself is brought down from its rightful ascendency ; 
and thus it is, that one act of disobedience may be the 
commencement and the token of a systematic universal 
rebelliousness of the heart against God. It is this 
which gives such a wide-wasting malignity to each of 
the separate offences on which we have now expatiated. 
It is this which so multiplies the means and the 
possibilities of corruption in the world. It is thus 
that, at every one point in the intercourse of human 
society, there may be struck out a fountain of poison- 
ous emanation on all who approach it ; and think not, 
therefore, that under each of the examples we have 
given, we were only contending for the preservation of 
one single feature in the character of him who stands 
exposed to this world's ofifences. We felt it, in fact, to 
be a contest for his eternity ; and that the case involved 
in it his general condition with God ; and that he who 
leads the young into a course of dissipation — or that 
he who tampers with their impressions of Sabbath 
sacredness— or that he who, either in the walks of 
business, or in the services of the family, makes them 



1G4 CHA1.M£RSU>ISCgURSES., 

the agents of deceitfulness— or that he, in short, who 
tempts them to transgress in any one thing, has, in fact, 
poured such a pervading taint into their moral con- 
stitution, as to spoil or corrupt them in all things : and 
that thus, upon one sohtary occasion, or by the 
exhibition of one particular offence, a mischief may be 
done equivalent to the total destruction of a human 
soul, or to the blotting out of its prospects for immor- 
tality. 

And let us just ask a master or a mistress, who can 
thus make free with the moral principle of their ser- 
vants in one instance, how they can look for pure or 
correct principle from them in other instances ? What 
right have they to complain of unfaithfulness against 
themselves, who have deUberately seduced another 
into a habit of unfaithfulness against God ? Are they so 
utterly unskilled in the mysteries of our nature, as not 
to perceive, that if a man gather hardihood enough to 
break the Sabbath in opposition to his own conscience, 
this very hardihood will avail him to the breaking of 
other obligations ? — that he whom, for their advantage, 
they have so exercised, as to fill his conscience with 
offence towards his God, will not scruple, for his own 
advantage, so to exercise himself, as to fill his con- 
science with offence towards his master ?—that the 
servant whom you have taught to lie, has gotten such 
rudiments of education at your hand, as that, v*ithout 
any further help, he can now teach himself to purloin ? 
— and yet nothing more frequent than loud and angry 
complainings against the treachery of servants ; as if, 
in the general w-reck of their other principles, a prin- 
ciple of consideration for the good and interest of their 



CHALMERS' DISCOURSES. 165 

employer — and who, at the same time, has been their 
seducer — was to survive in all its power, and all its 
sensibility. It is just such a retribution as was to be 
looked for. It is a recoil upon their own heads of the 
mischief which they themselves have originated. It is 
the temporal part of the punishment which they have 
to bear for the sin of our text, but not the whole of it : 
for better for them that both persoa and projierty were 
cast into the sea, than that they should stand the reck- 
oning of that day, when called to give an account of 
the souls that they have murdered, and the blood of so 
mighty a destruction is required at their hands. 

The evil against which we have just protested, is an 
outrage of far greater enormity than tyrant or oppressor 
can inflict, in the prosecution of his worst designs 
against the political rights and Hberties of the common- 
wealth. The very semblance of such designs will 
summon every patriot to his post of observation ; and, 
from a thousand watch-towers of alarm, will the out- 
cry of freedom in danger be heard throughout the 
land. But there is a conspiracy of a far more malig- 
nant influence upon the destinies of the species that is 
now going on ; and w^hich seems to call forth no in- 
dignant spirit, and to bring no generous exclamation 
along w^ith it. Throughout all the recesses of private 
and domestic history, there is an ascendency of rank 
and station against which no stern republican is ever 
heard to lift his voice — though it be an ascendency, so 
exercised, as to be of most noxious operation to the 
dearest hopes and best interests of humanity. There 
is a cruel combination of the great against the majesty 
of the people— we mean the majesty of the people's 



]g{j CHALMERS' DISCOURSES. 

worth. There ft a haughty unconcern about an in- 
heritance, which, by an unalienable right, should be 
theirs — we mean their future and everlasting inherit- 
ance There is a deadly invasion made on their 
rights — we mean their rights of conscience ; and, in 
this our land of boasted privileges, are the low tramp- 
led upon by the high— we mean trampled into all the 
degradation of guilt and of worthlessness. They are 
utterly bereft of that homage which ought to be ren- 
dered to the dignity of their immortal nature ; and to 
minister to the avarice of an imperious master, or to 
spare the sickly delicacy of the fashionables in our land, 
are the truth and the piety of our population, and all 
the virtues of their eternity, most unfeelingly plucked 
away from them. It belongs to others to fight the 
battle of their privileges in time. But who that looks 
with a calculating eye on their duration that never 
ends, can repress an alarm of a higher order ? It be- 
longs to others generously to struggle for the place and 
the adjustment of the lower orders in the great vessel 
of the state. But, surely, the question of their place 
in eternity is of mightier concern than how they are to 
sit and be accommodated in that pathway vehicle 
which takes them to their everlasting habitations. 

Christianity is, in one sense, the greatest of all level- 
lers. It looks to the elements, and not to the circum- 
stantials of humanity ; and regarding as altogether 
superficial and temporary the distinctions of this fleet- 
ing pilgrimage, it fastens on those points of assimilation 
which liken the king upon the throne to the very 
humblest of his subject population. They are alike 
in the nakedness of their birth. Thev are alike in the 



CHALMERS' DISCOURSES. I(j7 

sureness of their decay. They are alike in the ago- 
nies of their dissolution. And after the one is tombed in 
sepulchral magnificence, and the other is laid in his 
sod-wrapt grave, are they most fearfully alike in the 
corruption to which they moulder. But it is with the 
immortal nature of each that Christianity has to do ; 
and, in both the one and the other, does it bohold a 
nature alike forfeited by guilt, and alike capable of 
being restored by the grace of an offered salv ation. 
And never do the pomp and the circumstance of ex- 
ternals appear more humihating, than when, looking 
onwards to the day of resurrection, we behold the 
sovereign standing without his crown, and trembling, 
with the subject by his side at the bar of heaven's 
majesty. There the master and the servant will be 
brought to their reckoning together; and when the 
one is tried upon the guilt and the malignant influence 
of his Sabbath companies — and is charged with the 
profane and careless habit of his household establish- 
ment — -and is reminded how he kept both himself and 
his domestics from the solemn ordinance — and is made 
to perceive the fearful extent of the moral and spiritual 
mischief which he has wrought as the irreligious head 
of an irreligious family — and how, among other things 
he, under a system of fashionable hypocrisy, so tam- 
pered with another's principles as to defile his con- 
science, and to destroy him — O ! how tremendously 
will the little brief authority in which he now plays 
his fantastic tricks, turn to his own condemnation ; 
for, than thus abuse his authority, it were better for him 
that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he 
were cast into the sea. 



168 CHALMjt:RS' DISCOURSES. 

And how conies it, we ask, that any master is armed 
with a power so destructive over the immortals who 
are around him ? God has given him no such power 
The state has not given it to him. There is no law', 
either human or divine, by which he can enforce any 
order upon his servants to an act of falsehood, or to an 
act of impiety. Should any such act of authority be 
attempted on the part of the master, it should be fol- 
lowed up on the part of the servant by an act of diso- 
bedience. Should your master or mistress bid you 
say not at home, w hen you know that they are at home, 
it is your duty to refuse compliance with such an order : 
and if it be asked, how can this matter be adjusted 
after such a violent and alarming innovation on the 
law^s of fashionable intercourse, we answer, just by 
the simple substitution of truth for falsehood — just by 
prescribing the utterance of, engaged, which is a fact 
instead of the utterance of, not at home, which is a lie 
—just by holding the principles of your servant to be 
of higher account than the false delicacies of yowr ac- 
quaintance — just by a bold and vigorous recurrence to 
the simplicity of nature — just by determinedly doing 
what is right, though the example of a whole host 
were against you ; and by giving impulse to the cur- 
rent of example, when it happens to be moving in a 
proper direction. And here ' we are happy to say 
that fashion has of late been making a capricious and 
accidental movement on the side of principle — and to 
be blunt, and open, and manly, is now on the fair way 
to be fashionable — and a temper of homelier quality is 
beginning to infuse itself into the luxuriousness, and 
the effeminacy, and the palling and excessive com- 
plaisance of genteel society — and the staple of cultiva- 



CHALMERS' DISCOURSES. J69 

ted manners is improving in firmness, and frankness, 
and honesty, and may, at length, by the aid of a prin- 
ciple of Christian rectitude, be so interwoven with the 
cardinal virtues, as to present a diiferent texture alto- 
gether from the soft and the silken degeneracy of mo- 
dern days. 

And that we may not appear the champions of an 
insurrection against the authority of masters, let us 
further say, that while it is the duty of clerk or ap- 
prentice to refuse the doing of week-day work on the 
Sabbath, and while it is the duty of servants to refuse 
the utterance of a prescribed falsehood, and while it is 
the duty of every dependent, in the service of his mas- 
ter, to serve him only in the Lord — yet this very prin- 
ciple, tending as it may to a rare and occasional act 
of disobedience, is also the principle which renders 
every servant who adheres to it a perfect treasure 
of fidelity, and |attachment, and general obedience. 
This is the way in which to obtain a credit for his 
refusal, and to stamp upon it a noble consistency. 
In this way he will, even to the mind of an ungodly 
master, make up for all his particularities : and 
should he be what, if a Christian, he will be ; should 
he be, at all times, the most alert in service, .and the 
most patient of provocation, and the most cordial in 
affection, and the most scrupulously honest in the 
charge and custody of all that is committed to him — 
then let the post of drudgery at which he toils be hum- 
ble as it may, the contrast between the meanness of 
his office and the dignity of his character will only 
heighten the reverence that is due to principle, and 

make it more illustrious. His scruples may, at first. 

99. ' ' 



J 70 CHALjMERS' DioCOUKSEfe. 

be the topics of displeasure, and aftet wards the topics! 
of occasional levity ; but, in spite of himself, will his 
employer be at length constrained to look upon them 
with respectful toleration. The servant will be to the 
master a living epistle of Christ, and he may read 
there what he has not yet perceived in the letter of the 
New Testament. He may read, in the person of his 
own domestic, the power and the truth of Christianity. 
He may positively stand in awe of his own hired ser- 
vant — and, regarding his bosom as a sanctuary of 
worth which it were monstrous to violate, will he feel, 
when tempted to offer one command of impiety, that 
he cannot, that he dare not: 

And, before we conclude, let us, if possible, try to 
rebuke the wealthy out of their unfeeling indifference 
to the souls of the poor, by the example of the Saviour. 
Let those who look on the immortality of the poor 
as beneath their concern, only look unto Christ— to 
him who, for the sake of the poorest of us all, became 
poor himself, that we, through his poverty, might be 
made rich. Let them think how the principle of all 
these offences which we have been attempting to ex- 
pose, is in the direct face of that principle which 
prompted, at first, and which still presides over, the 
whole of the gospel dispensation. Let them learn a 
higher reverence for the eternity of those beneath them, 
by thinking of him, who, to purchase an inheritance 
for the poor, and to provide them with the blessings of 
a preached gospel, unrobed him of all his greatness ; 
and descended himself to the lot and the labours of 
poverty ; and toiled, to the beginning of his public 
ministry at the work of a carpenter ; and submitted 



CHALMERS' DISCOURSES. l7l 

to ail the horrors of a death which was aggravated by 
the burden of a w^orld's atonement and made incon- 
ceivably severe by there being infused into it all the 
bitter of expiation. Think, O think, when some petty 
design of avarice or vanity would lead you to forget 
the imperishable souls of those who are beneath you, 
that you are setting yourselves in diametric opposition 
to that which lieth nearest to the heart of the Saviour ; 
that you are countervailing the whole tendency of his 
redemption ; that you are thwarting the very object of 
that enterprise for which all heaven is represented as 
in motion— and angels are with wonder looking on — 
and God the Father laid an appointment on the Son 
of his love — and he, the august personage in whom 
the magnificent train of prophecy, from the beginning 
of the world, has its theme and its fulfilment, at length 
came amongst us, in shrouded majesty, and w^as led to 
the cross, like a lamb for the slaughter, and bowed his 
head in agony, and gave up the ghost. 

And here let us address one word more to the mas- 
ters and mistresses of families. By adopting the refor- 
mations to which we have been urging you, you may 
do good to the cause of Christianity, and yet not ad- 
vance, by a single hair-breath, the Christianity of your 
own souls. It is not by this one reformation, or, in- 
deed, by any given number of reformations, that you 
are saved. It is by believing in Christ that men are 
saved. You may escape, it is sure, a higher degree of 
punishment, but you will not escape damnation. You 
may do good to the souls of your servants, by a rigid 
observance of the lesson of this day. But we seek the 
good of your own souls, also, and we pronounce upon 



i72 CHALMERS' DISCOLKSES. 

them that they are in a state of death, till one great act 
be performed, and one act^ too, which does not consist 
of any number of particular acts, or particular refor- 
mations. What shall I do to be saved? Beheve in 
the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved. And 
he who beheveth not, the wrath of God abideth on 
him. Do this, if you want to make the great and 
important transition for yourselves. Do this if you 
want your own name to be blotted out of the book 
of condemnation. If you seek to have your own 
persons justified before God, submit to the right- 
eousness of God- — even that righteousness which is 
through the faith of Christ, and is unto all and 
upon all who beheve. This is the turning point of 
jour acceptance with the Lawgiver. And at this 
step, also, in the history of your souls, will there 
be applied to you a power of motive, and will you 
be endowed with an obedient sensibility to the in- 
fluence of motive, which will make it the turning point 
of a new heart and a new character. The particular 
reformation that we have now been urging will be one 
of a crowd of other reformations ; and, in the spirit of 
him who pleased not himself, but gave up his life for 
others, will you forego all the desires of selfishness and 
vanity, and look not merely to your own things, but 
also to the things of others. 



DISCOURSE VIII. 

ON THE LOVE OF MONEY. 



^ Z*^ If i have made gold my hope, or have said to the fine gold, Thou art 
my confidence ; If 1 rejoiced because my wealth was great, and be- 
cause mine hand had gotten much ; If 1 beheld the sun when it 
shined, or the moon walking in brightness ; and my heart hath been 
secretly enticed, or my mouth hath kissed my hand ; this also were 
an iniquity to be punished by the judge; fori should have denied the 
God that is above." — Job xxxi. 24-— 28. 



What is worthy of remark in this passage is, that a 
certain affection only known among the votaries ^of 
Paganism, should be classed under the same charac- 
ter and have the same condemnation with an affec- 
tipn, not only known, but allowed, nay cherished in- 
to habitual supremacy, all over Christendom. How 
universal is it among those who are in pursuit of 
wealth, to make gold their hope, and among those 
who are in possession of wealth, to make fine gold 
their confidence ! Yet we are here told that this 
is virtually as complete a renunciation of God 
as to practise some of the worst charms of idol- 
atry* And it might perhaps serve to unsettle the 
vanity of those who, unsuspicious of the disease 
that is in their hearts, are wholly given over to 
this world, and wholly without alarm in their an- 
ticipations of another, — could we convince them that 
the most reigning and resistless desire by which they 
arc actuated, stamps the same perversity on them, in 
the sight of God, as he sees to be in those who are 



1'5'4 CHALMERS' DISCOURSES^ 

worshippers of the sun in the firmament, or are offer- 
ing incense to the moon, as the queen of heaven. 

We recoil from an idolater, as from one who la- 
bours under a great moral derangement, in suffering 
his regards to be carried away from the true God to 
an idol. But, is it not just the same derangement, on 
the part of man, that he should love any created good, 
and in the enjoyment of it lose sight of the Creator — 
that he should delight himself with the use and the 
possession of a gift, and be unaffected by the circum- 
stance of its having been put into his hands by a giver 
— that, thoroughly absorbed with the present and the 
sensible gratification, there should be no room left for 
the movements of duty or regard to the Being who 
furnished him with the materials, and endowed him 
with the organs, of every gratification, — that he should 
thus lavish all his desires on the surrounding material- 
ism, and fetch from it all his delights, while the 
thought of him who formed it is habitually absent 
from his heart — that, in the play of those attractions 
that subsist between him and the various objects in the 
neighbourhood of his person, there should be the same 
want of reference to God, as there is in the play 
of those attractions which subsist between a piece 
of unconscious matter and the other matter that is 
around it — that all the influences which operate upon 
the human will should emanate from so many various 
points in the mechanism of what is formed, but that no 
practical or ascendant influence should come down 
upon it from the presiding and the preserving Deity ? 
Why, if such be man, he could not be otherwise, though 
there were no Deity. The part he sustains in the 



CHALMEKS' DJSCOUllSKS.. ij.^ 

world is the very same that it would have been, had 
the world sprung into being of itself, or without an 
originating mind had maintained its being from eter- 
nity. He just puts forth the evolutions of his own 
nature, as one of the component individuals in a vast 
independent system of nature, made up of many parts 
and many individuals. In hungering for what is agree- 
able to\his senses, or recoiling from what is bitter or 
unsuitable to them, he does so without thinking of 
God, or borrowing any impulse to his own will from 
any thing he knows or believes to be the will of God. 
Religion has just as little to do with those daily move- 
ments of his which are voluntary, as it has to do with 
the growth of his body, which is involuntary ; or, as 
it has to do, in other words, with the progress and the 
phenomena of vegetation. With a mind that ought to 
know God, and a conscience that ought to award to 
him the supreme jurisdiction, he lives as effectually 
without him, as if he had no mind and no conscience ; 
and, bating a few transient visitations of thought, and 
a few regularities of outward and mechanical observa- 
tion, do we behold man running, and willing, and 
preparing, and enjoying, just as if there was no other 
portion than the creature— just as if the world, and its 
visible elements, formed the all with which he had to 
do. 

I wish to impress upon you the distinction that there 
is between the love of money, and the love of what 
money purchases. Either of these affections may 
equally displace God from the heart. But there is a 
malignity and an inveteracy of atheism in the former 
which does not belong to the latter, and in virtue of 



17^ CHALMEfiS' DISCOURSES. 

which it may be seen that the love of money is, indeed, 
the root of all evil. 

When we indulge the love of that which is purchas- 
ed by money, the materials of gratification, and the 
organs of gratification are present with each other — 
just as in the enjoyments of the inferior animals, and 
just as in all the simple and immediate enjoyments of 
man ; such as the tasting of food, or the smelHng of a 
flower. There is an adaptation of the senses to certain 
external objects, and there is a pleasure arising out of 
that adaptation, and it is a pleasure which may be felt 
by man, along with a right and a full infusion of godli- 
ness. The primitive Christians, for example, ate their 
meat with gladness and singleness of heart, praising 
God. But, in the case of every unconverted man, the 
pleasure has no such accompaniaient. He carries in 
his heart no recognition of that hand, by the opening 
of which it is, that the means and the materials of 
enjoyment are placed within his reach. The matter 
of the enjoyment is all with which he is conversant. 
The Author of the enjoyment is unheeded. The 
avidity with which he rushes onward to any of the 
direct gratifications of nature bears a resemblance to 
the avidity with which one of the lower creation rushes 
to its food, or to its water, or to the open field, where 
it gambols in all the wantonness of freedom, and finds 
a high- breathed joy in the very strength and velocity 
of its movements. And the atheism of the former, 
who has a mind for the sense and knowledge of his 
Creator, is often as entire as the atheism of the latter, 
who has it not. Man, who ought to look to the primary 
cause of all his blessings, because he is capable of 



CHALMERS' DlSCOnRSES. iJj 

seeing thus far, is often as blind to God, in the midst of 
enjoyment, as the animal who is not capable of seeing 
him. He can trace the stream to its fountain ; but 
still he drinks of the stream with as much greediness of 
pleasure, and as little recognition'of its source, as the 
animal beneath him. In other words, his atheism, 
while tasting the bounties of Providence, is just as 
complete, as is the atheism of the inferior animals. 
But theirs proceeds from their incapacity of knowing 
God. His proceeds from his not liking to retain God 
in his knowledge. He may come under the power of 
godliness, if he would. But he chooses rather that the 
power of sensuality should lord it over him, and his 
whole man is engrossed with the objects of sensuality. 

But a man differs from an animal in being something 
more than a sensitive being. He is also a reflective 
being. He has the power of thought, and inference, 
and anticipation, to signalise him above the beasts of 
the field, or of the forest ; and yet will it be found, in 
the case of every natural man, that the exercise of 
those powers, so far from having carried him nearer, 
has only widened his departure from God, and given 
a more deliberate and wilful character to his atheism, 
than if he had been without them altogether. 

In virtue of the powers of mind which belong to 
him, he can carry his thoughts beyond the present 
desires and the present gratification. He can calcu- 
late on the visitations of future desire, and on the 
means of its gratification. He cannot only follow out 
the impulse of hunger that is now upon him ; he can 
look onwards to the successive and recurring m- 



j;S CHALMERS' DISCOURSES. 

pulses of hunger which await him, and he can devise 
expedients for relieving it. Out of that great stream 
of supply, which comes direct from Heaven to earth, 
for the sustenance of all its living generations, he can 
draw off and appropriate a separate rill of conveyance, 
and direct it into a reservoir for himself. He can en- 
large the capacity, or he can strengthen the embank- 
ments of this reservoir. By doing the one, he aug- 
ments his proportion of this common tide of wealth 
which circulates through the world, and by doing the 
other, he augments his security for holding it in per- 
petual possession. The animal who drinks out of the 
stream thinks not whence it issues. But man thinks of 
the reservoir which yields to him his portion of it. 
And he looks no further. He thinks not that to fill it, 
there must be a great and original fountain, out of 
which there issueth a mighty flood of abundance for 
the purpose of distribution among all the tribes and 
families of the world. He stops short at the second- 
ary and artificial fabric which he himself hath formed, 
and out of which, as from a spring, he draws his own 
peculiar enjoyments ; and never thinks either of his 
own peculiar supply fluctuating with the variations of 
the primary spring, or of connecnng these variations 
with the will of the great but unseen director of all 
things. It is true, that if this main and originating 
fountain be, at any time, less copious in its emission, 
he will have less to draw from it to his own reservoir ; 
mid in that very proportion will his share of the bounties 
of Providence be reduced. But still it is to the well, 
or receptacle, of his own striking out that he looks, as 
his main security for the relief of nature's wants, and 
the abundant supply of nature's enjoyments. It is 



CHALMERS' DISCOURSES. ^ IfQ 

upon his own work that he depends in this matter, and 
not on the work or the will of him who is the Author 
of nature ; who giveth rain from heaven and fruit- 
ful seasons, and filleth every heart with food and 
gladness. And thus it is that the reason of man, and 
the retrospective power of man, still fail to carry him, 
by an ascending process, to the First Cause. He stops 
at the instrumental cause, which, by his own wisdom 
and his own power, he has put into operation. In a 
word, the man's understanding is over-run with athe- 
ism, as well as his desires. The intellectual as well as 
the sensitive part of his constitution seems to be infect- 
ed with it. When, like the instinctive and unreflecting 
animal, he engages in the act of direct enjoyment, he is 
like it, too, in its atheism. When he rises above the 
animal, and, in the exercise of his higher and larger 
faculties, he engages in the act of providing for enjoy- 
ment, he still carries his atheism along with him. 

A sum of money is, in all its functions, equivalent 
to such a reservoir. Take one year with another/and 
the annual consumption of the world cannot exceed 
the annual produce which issues from the storehouse 
of him who is the great and the bountiful Provider of 
all its families. The money that is in any man's pos- 
session represents the share which he can appropriate 
to himself of this, produce. If it be a large sum, it is 
like a capacious reservoir on the bank of the river of 
abundance. If it be laid out on firm and stable secu- 
rities, still it is like a firmly embanked reservoir. The 
man who toils to increase his money is like a man 
who toils to enlarge the capacity of his reservoir. The 
man who suspects a flkw in his securities, or who ap- 



180 CHALAIEKS' DISCOUKBES. 

prehends, in the report of failures and fluctuations, that 
his money is all to flow away from him, is like a man 
who apprehends a flaw in the embankments of his 
reservoir. Meanwhile, in all the care that is thus ex- 
pended, either on the money or on the magazine, the 
originating source, out of which there is imparted to 
the one all its real worth, or there is imparted to the 
other all its real fulness, is scarcely ever thought of- 
Let God turn the earth into a barren desert, and the 
money ceases to be convertible to any purpose of en- 
joyment ; or let him' lock up that magazine of great 
and general supply, out of which he showers abundance 
among our habitations, and all the subordinate maga- 
zines formed beside the wonted stream of liberality, 
would remain empty. But all this is forgotten by the 
vast majority of our unthoughtful and unreflecting 
species. The patience of God is still unexhausted; 
and the seasons still roll in kindly succession over the 
heads- of an ungrateful generation; and that period, 
when the machinery of our present system shall stop 
and be taken to pieces has not yet arrived; and that 
Spirit, who will not always strive with the children of 
men, is still prolonging his experiment on the powers 
and the perversities of our moral nature ; and still sus- 
pending the edict of dissolution, by which this earth 
and these heavens are at length to pass away. So 
that the sun still shines upon us ; and the clouds still 
drop upon us; and the earth still puts forth the bloom 
and the beauty of its luxuriance ; and all the minis- 
ters of heaven's liberality still walk their annual round, 
and scatter plenty over the face of an alienated world ; 
and the whole of nature continues as smiling in pro- 
mise, and as sure in fulfihnent, as hi the days of our 



CHALiMEK'S DJSCOUllSESy |g| 

ibrefathers ; and out of her large and universal gra- 
nary is there, in every returning year, as rich a con- 
veyance of aliment as before, to the populous family 
in whose behalf it is opened. But it is the business of 
many among that population, each to erect his own 
separate granary, and to replenish it out of the general 
store, and to feed himself and his dependents out of it. 
And he is right in so doing. But he is not right in 
looking to his own peculiar receptacle, as if it were the 
first and the emanating fountain of all his enjoyments. 
He is not right in thus idolising the work of his own 
hands — awarding no glory and no confidence to him 
in whose hands is the key of that great storehouse, out 
of which every lesser storehouse of man derives its 
fulness. He is not right, in labouring after the money 
which purchaseth all things, to avert the earnestness 
of his regards from the Being who provides all things. 
He is not right, in thus building his security on that 
which is subordinate, unheeding and unmindful of him 
who is supreme. It is not right, that silver, and gold, 
though unshaped into statuary, should still be doing, 
in this enlightened land, what the images of Paganism 
once did. It is not right, that they should thus supplant 
the deference which is owing to the God and the 
governor of all things — or that each man amongst us 
should in the secret homage of trust and satisfaction 
which he renders to his bills, and his deposits, and 
his deeds of property and possession, endow these 
various articles with the same moral ascendency 
over his heart, as the household gods of antiquity 
had over the idolaters of antiquity — making them 
as effectually usurp the place of the divinity, and 
dethrone the one Monarch of heaven and earth from 



1^2 CHALMERS' DISCOURSES. 

that pre-eminence of trust and of affection tliat belongs 
to him. 

He who makes a god of his pleasure, renders to 
this idol the homage of his senses. He who makes a 
god of his wealth, renders to this idol the homage of 
his mind ; and he, therefore, of the two, is the more 
hopeless and determined idolater. The former is 
goaded on to his idolatry, by the power of appetite. 
The latter cultivates his with wdlful and deliberate 
perseverance ; consecrates his very highest powers to its 
service ; embarks in it, not with the heat of passion, 
but, with the coolness of steady and calculating prin- 
ciple ; fully gives up his reason and his time, and all 
the faculties of his understanding, as well as all the 
desires of his heart, to the great object of a fortune in 
this w^orld ; makes the acquirement of gain the settled 
aim, and the prosecution of that aim the settled habit 
of his existence ; sits the whole day long at the post 
of his ardent and unremitting devotions ; and, as he 
labours at the desk of his counting-house, has his soul 
just as effectually seduced from the living God to an 
object distinct from him, and contrary to him as if the 
ledger over which be was bending was a book of mys- 
tical characters, written in honour of some golden idol 
placed before him, and with a view to render this idol 
propitious to himself and to his family. Baal and Mo- 
loch were not more substantially the gods of rebellious 
Israel, than Mammon is the god of all his affections. 
To the fortune he has reared, or is rearing, for him- 
self and his descendents, he ascribes all the power and 
all the independence of a, divinity. With the wealth 
he has gotten by his own hands, does he feel himself 



CHAUIURS' DISCOURSES. ) 33 

as independent of God, as the Pagan does, who, hap- 
py in the fancied protection of an image made with 
his own hand, suffers no disturbance to his quiet, 
from any thought of the real but the unknown Deity. 
His confidence is in his treasure, and not in God. It is 
there that he places all his safety and all his sufficiency. 
It is not on the Supreme Being, conceived in the light 
of a real and a personal agent, that he places his depen- 
dence. It is on a mute and material statue of his own 
erection. It is wealth, which stands to him in the place 
of God — to which he awards the credit of all his enjoy- 
ments — which he looks to as the emanating fountain of 
all his present sufficiency — from which he gathers his 
fondest expectations of all the bright and fancied bless- 
edness thatis yet before him — on which he rests as the 
firmest and stablest foundation of all that the heart can 
wish, or the eye can long after, both for himself and for 
his children. It matters not for him, that all his enjoy- 
ment comes from a primary fountain, and that his 
wealth is only an intermediate reservoir. It matters 
not to him, that, if God were to set a seal upon the up- 
per storehouse in heaven, or to blast and to burn up 
all the fruitfulness of earth, he would reduce, to the 
worthlessness of dross, all the silver and the gold that 
abound in it. Still the gold and the silver are his gods. 
His own fountain is between him and the fountain of 
original supply. His wealth is between him and God. 
Its various lodging-places, whether in the bank, or in 
the place of registration, or in the depository of wills 
and title-deeds — these are the sanctuaries of his secret 
worship — these are the highplaces of his adoration ; 
and never did devout Israelite look with more intentness 
towards Mount Zion, and with his face towards Jeru 



184 CHALMERS' DISCOURSES. 

salem, than he does to his wealth, as to the mountain 
and stronghold of his security. Nor could the Supreme 
be more effectually deposed from the homage of 
trust and gratitude than he actually is, though this 
wealth were recalled from its various investments ; and 
turned into one mass of gold ; and cast into a piece of 
molten statuary ; and enshrined on a pedestal, around 
which all his household might assemble, and make it the 
object of their family devotions; and plied every hour 
of every day with all the fooleries of a senseless and 
degrading Paganism. It is thus, that God may keep 
up the charge of idolatry against us, even after all its 
images have been overthrown. It is thus that dissua- 
sives from idolatry are still addressed, in the New 
Testament, to the pupils of a new and better dispen- 
sation ; that little children are warned against idols; 
and all of us are warned to flee from covetousness, 
which is idolatry. 

To look no further than to fortune as the dispenser 
of all the enjoyments which money can purchase, is to 
make that fortune stand in the place of God. It is to 
make sense shut out faith, and to rob the King eternal 
and invisible of that supremacy, to which all the bless- 
itigs of human existence, and all the varieties of human 
condition, ought, in every instance, and in every par- 
ticular, to be referred. But, as we have already re- 
marked, the love of money is one affection, and the 
love of what is purchased by money is another. It 
was at first, we have no doubt, loved for the sake of 
the good things which it enabled its possessor to 
acquire. But whether, as the result of associations in 
the mind so rapid as to escape the notice of our own 



OHALMEKS' DISCOURSES. J85 

consciousness — or as the fruit of an infection running 
by sympathy among all men busily engaged in the 
prosecution of wealth, as the suprtme good of their 
being — certain it is, that money, originally pursued 
for the sake of other things, comes at length to be 
prized for its own sake. And, perhaps, there is no 
one circumstance which serves more to liken the love 
of money to the most irrational of the heathen idola- 
tries, than that it at length passes into the love of money 
for itself; and acquires a most enduring power over 
the human affections, separately altogether from the 
power of purchase and of command which belongs to 
it, over the proper and original objects of human desirCp 
The first thing which set man agoing in the p « suit of 
wealth, was that, through it, as an intervening medium, 
he found his way to other enjoyments ; and it proves 
him, as we have observed, capable of a higher reach 
of anticipation than the beasts of the field, or the fowls 
of the air, that he is thus able to calculate, and to fore- 
see, and to build up a provision for the wants of futu- 
rity. But, mark how soon this boasted distinction of 
his faculties is over thrown, and how near to eacbb 
other lie the dignity and the debasement of the humaa 
understanding. If it evinced a loftier mind in man 
than in the inferior animals, that he invented money, 
and by the acquisition of it can both secure abundance 
for himself, and transmit this abundance to the future 
generations of his family — what have we to offer, in 
vindication of this intellectual eminence, when we 
witness how soon it is, that the pursuit of wealth 
ceases to be rational ?— How , instead of being prose- 
cuted as an instrument, either for the purchase of ease^ 

or the purchase of enjoyment, both the ease and enjoy- 

24- 



186 CHALMERS' DISCOURSES. 

ment of a whole life are rendered up as sacrifices at its 
shrine ? — How, from being sought after as a minister 
of gratification to the appetites of nature, it at length 
brings nature into bondage, and robs her of all her 
simple delights, and pours the infusion of w^ormwood 
into the currency of her feelings ? — making that man 
sad who ought to be cheerful, and that man who ought 
to rejoice in his present abundance, filhng him either 
with the cares of an ambition which never will be 
satisfied, or with the apprehensions of a distress which 
in all its pictured and exaggerated evils, will never be 
reahsed. And it is wonderful, it is passing wonderful, 
that wealth, which derives all that is true and sterling 
in its worth from its subserviency to other advanta- 
ges, should, apart from all thought about this subservi- 
ency, be made the object of such fervent and fatiguing 
devotion. Insomuch, that never did Indian devotee 
inflict upon himself a severer agony at the footstool of 
his Paganism, than those devotees of wealth who, for 
its acquirement as their ultimate object, will forego all 
the uses for which alone it is valuable — will give up all 
that is genuine or tranquil in the pleasures of life ; and 
will pierce themselves through with many sorrows - 
and will undergo all the fiercer tortures of the mind ; 
and, instead of employing what they have, to smooth 
their passage through the world, will, upon the hazar- 
dous sea of adventure, turn the whole of this passage 
into a storm — thus exalting wealth, from a servant 
unto a lord, who, in return for the homage that he 
obtains from his worshippers, exercises them, like Re- 
hoboam his subjects of old, not with whips but with 
scorpions-^with consuming anxiety, with never-sated 
desire, with brooding apprehension, and its frequent 



CHALMERS' DISCOURSES. 187 

and ever^jfiiiting spectres, and the endless jealousies of 
competition with men as intently devoted, and as 
emulous of a high place in the temple of their common 
idolatry, as themselves. And, without going to the 
higher exhibitions of this propensity, in all its rage and 
in all its restlessness, we have only to mark its work- 
ings on the walk of even and every-day citizenship ; 
and there see, how, in the hearts even of its most 
common-place votaries, wealth is followed after, for 
its own sake ; how, unassociated with all for which 
reason pronounces it to be of estimation, but, in virtue 
of some mysterious and undefinable charm, operating 
not on any principle of the judgment, but on the utter 
perversity of judgment, money has come to be of high- 
er account than all that is purchased by money, and 
has attained a rank co-ordinate with that which our 
Saviour assigns to the life and to the body of man, in 
being reckoned more than meat and more than rai- 
ment. Thus making that which is subordinate to be 
primary, and that which is primary subordinate ; 
transferring, by a kind of fascination, the affections 
away from wealth in use, to wealth in idle and unem- 
ployed possession, — insomuch, that the most welcome 
intelligence you could give to the proprietor of many 
a snug deposit, in some place of secure and progress- 
ive accumulation, would be, that he should never re- 
quire any part either of it or of its accumulation back 
again for the purpose of expenditure — and that, to the 
end of his life, every new year should witness another 
unimpaired addition to the bulk or the aggrandisement 
of his idol. And it would just heighten his enjoyment 
could he be told, with prophetic certainty, that thi$ 
process of undisturbed augmentation would go on with 



188 CHALMERS' DISCOURSES. 

his children's children, to the last age of the world i 
that the economy of each succeeding race of descend- 
ants would leave the sum with its interest untouched^ 
and the place of its sanctuary unviolated ; and, that 
through a series of indefinite generations, would the 
magnitude ever grow, and the lustre ever brighten, of 
that h usehold god, which he had erected for his own 
senseless adoration^ and beqiicathed as an object of as 
senseless adoration to his family. 

We have the authority of that word which has been 
pronounced a discerner of the thoughts and intents of 
the heart, that it cannot have two masters, or that 
there is not room in it for two great and ascendant 
affections. The engrossing power of one such affection 
is expressly affirmed of the love for Mammon or the 
love for money thus named and characterised as an 
idoL Or, in other words, if the love of money be in 
the heartj the love of God is not there. If a man be 
trusting in uncertain riches, he is not trusting in the 
living God, who giveth us all things richly to enjoy. 
If his heart be set upon covetousness, it is set upon an 
object of idolatry. The true divinity is moved away 
from his place, and, worse than atheism, which would 
only leave itempty^ has the love of wealth raised ano- 
ther divinity upon his throne. So that covetousness 
offers a more daring and positive aggression on the 
right and territory of the godhead, than even infidelity. 
The latter would only desolate the sanctuary of 
heaven ; the former would set up an abomination in 
the midst of it. It not only strips God of love and of 
confidence, which are his prerogatives, but it transfers 
them to another. And little does the man who is 
proud in honour, but, at the same time, proud and 



CIIALMEIIS' DISCOURSES. J^y 

peering in ambition — little does he think, that, though 
acquitted in the eye of all his fellows, there still re- 
mains an atrocity of a deeper character than even that 
of atheism, with which he is chargeable. Let him 
just take an account of his mind, amid the labours of 
his merchandise, and he will find that the living God 
has no ascendency there ; but that wealth just as much 
as if personified into life, and agency, and power, 
wields over him all the ascendency of God* Where 
his treasure is, his heart is also ; and, linking as he 
does his main hope with its increase, and his main fear 
with its fluctuations and its failures, he has as effectu- 
ally dethroned the Supreme from his heart, and deified 
an usurper in his room, as if fortune had been embodied 
into a goddess, and he were in the habit of repairing, 
with a crowd of other worshippers, to her temple. She, 
in fact, is the dispenser of that which he chiefly prizes 
in existence. A smile from her is worth all the 
promises of the Eternal, and her threatening frown 
more dreadful to the imagination than all his terrors. 

And the disease is as near to universal as it is viru- 
lent. Wealth is the goddess whom all the world 
worshippeth. There is many a city in our empire, of 
which, with an eye of apostolical discernment, it may 
be seen, that it is almost wholly given over to idolatry. 
If a man look no higher than to his money for his 
enjoyments, then money is his god. It is the god of 
his dependence, and the god upon whom his heart is 
staid. Or if, apart from other enjoyments, it, by some 
magical power of its own, has gotten the ascendency, 
then still it is followed after as the supreme good ; and 
there is an^ctual supplanting of the living God. He 



190 CHALMERS' DiSCOURSEc 

is robbed of the gratitude that we owe him for oui' 
daily sustenance ; for, instead of receiving it as if it 
came direct out of iiishand, we receive it as if it came 
from the hand of a secondary agent, to whom we 
ascribe all the stability and independence of God. 
This wealth, in fact, obscures to us the character of 
God, as the real though unseen Author of our various 
blessings ; and as if by a material intervention, does 
it hide from the perception of nature, the hand which 
feeds, and clothes, and maintains us in life, and in all 
the comforts and necessaries of life. It just has the 
eifect of thickening still more that impalpable veil 
which lies between God and the eye of the senses. We 
lose all discernment of him as the giver of our comforts ; 
and coming, as they appear to do, from that wealth 
which our fancies have raised into a living personifica- 
tion, does this idol stand before us, not as a deputy but 
as a substitute for that Being, with whom it is that we 
really have to do. All this goes both to widen and to 
fortify that disruption which has taken place between 
God and the world. It adds the power of one great 
master idol to the seducing influence of all the lesser 
idolatries. When the Uking and the confidence of men 
are towards money, there is no direct intercourse, 
either by the one or the other of these affections 
towards God ; and, in proportion as he sends forth 
his desires, and rests his security on the former, in that 
very proportion does he renounce God as his hope, and 
God as his dependence. 

And to advert, for one moment, to the misery of 
this aifection, as well as to its sinfulness. He, over 
whom it reigns, feels a worthlessness in his present 



CHALMERS' DISCOURSES 19| 

wealth, after it is gotten ; and when to this we add the 
restlessness of a yet unsated appetite, lording it over 
all his convictions, and panting for more ; when, to 
the dulness of his actual satisfaction in all the riches 
that he has, we add his still unquenched, and, indeed un- 
quenchable desire for the riciiesthat he has not ; when 
we reflect that as, in the pursuit of wealth, he widens the 
circle of his operation, so he lengthens out the line of 
his open and hazardous exposure, and multiplies, along 
the extent of it, those vulnerable points from which 
another and another dart of anxiety may enter into 
his heart ; when he feels himself as if floating on an 
ocean of contingency, on which, perhaps, he is only 
borne up by the breath of a credit that is fictitious, 
and which, liable to burst every moment, may leave 
him to sink under the weight of his overladen specu- 
lation ; v/hen, suspended on the doubtful result of his 
bold and uncertain adventure, he dreads the tidings of 
disaster in every arrival, and lives in a continual agony 
of feeling, kept up by the crowd and turmoil of his 
manifold distractions, and so overspreading the whole 
compass of his thoughts, as to leave not one narrow 
space for the thought of eternity ; — will any beholder 
just look to the mind of this unhappy man, thus tost 
and bewildered and thrown into a general unceasing 
frenzy, made out of many fears and many agitations, 
and not say, that the bird of the air which sends forth 
its unreflecting song, and lives on the fortuitous bounty 
of Providence, is not higher in the scale of enjoyment 
than he ? And how much more, then, the quiet Chris- 
tian beside him, who, in possession of food and raiment 
has that godliness with contentment which is great 
gain — who with the peace of heaven in his heart, 



J92 CHALMERS' DiSCOUUSES. 

and the glories of heaven in his eye, has found out the 
true philosophy of existence ; has sought a portion 
where alone a portion can be found, and, in bidding 
away from his mind the love of money, has bidden 
away all the cross and all the carefulness along with it. 

Death will soon break up every swelling enterprise 
of ambition, and put upon it a most cruel and degrading 
mockery. And it is, indeed an affecting sight, to behold 
the workings of this world's infatuation among so many 
of our fellow mortals nearing and nearing everyday to 
eternity, and yet, instead of taking heed to that which is 
before them, mistaking their temporary vehicle for 
their abiding home — and spending all their time and 
all their thought upon its accommodations. It is all 
the doing of our great adversary, thus to invest the 
trifles of a day in such characters of greatfiess and 
durability ; and it is, indeed, one of the most formida- 
ble of his wiles. And whatever may be the instrument 
of reclaiming men from this delusion, it certainly is 
not any argument either about the shortness of life, or 
the certainty and awfulness of its appfoaching termina- 
tion. On this point man is capable of a stout-hearted 
resistance, even to ocular demonstration ; nor do we 
know a more striking evidence of the bereavement 
which must have passed upon the human faculties, 
than to see how, in despite of arithmetic, — how, in 
despite of manifold experience^ — how, in despite of all 
his gathering wrinkles, and all his growing infirmities 
—•how, in despite of the ever-lessening distance be- 
tween him amd his sepulchre, and of all the tokens of 
pre[)aration for the onset of the last messenger, with 
which, in the shape of weakness, and breathlessnes$, 



CHALMERS' DISCOURSJiS. 193 

and dimness of eyes, he is visited; will the feeble 
and asthmatic man still shake his silver locks in all the 
glee and transport of which he is capable, when he 
hears of his gainful adventures, and his new accumu- 
lations. Nor can we tell how near he must get to his 
grave, or how far on he must advance in the process of 
dying, ere gain cease to delight, and the idol of wealth 
cease to be dear to him. But when we see that the 
topic is trade and its profits, which lights up his faded 
eye with the glow of its chiefest ecstacy, we are as 
much satisfied that he leaves the world with all his 
treasure there, and all the desires of his heart there, 
as if acting what is told of the miser's death-bed, he 
made his bills and his parchments of security the com- 
panions of his bosom, and the last movements of his 
life were a fearful, tenacious, determined grasp, of what 
to him formed the all for which life was valuable. 



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